


Breaking the Cycle

by theseeker64



Category: Dark Souls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 11:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 387,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1687406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseeker64/pseuds/theseeker64
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Knight Lautrec has stumbled upon a terrible realization: the world of Lordran is being cycled over and over endlessly by a 'chosen' stream of heroes. Now he's intent on finding a way to put an end to the madness, and is enlisting the aid of the Mother of Pyromancy, Quelana, the Trickster, Patches, and many others to resolve this eternal conflict - and break the cycle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

 

[Link to cover art by AskCiaran on Tumblr](http://askciaran.tumblr.com/image/66950673892)

 

**Chapter 1**

Across the infested plains of Blighttown, beyond the mucky green swamps and past the cracked, decaying, pillars that held up the world, she saw him coming; his gold suit of armor glinting and gleaming off his torch with every cautious step he took. The man and his armor looked ridiculous. Gold had no place in the swamps. The swamps were for dark things, like herself, and Quelana decided that if the fool came within striking distance, she would melt that armor right off his body to teach him a lesson.

As he trudged through the swamp, swatting at the overgrown mosquitos and stepping carefully around a pair of cragspiders that were feasting upon a corpse, she realized that the fool wasn't just intending to come near her, but that she herself seemed to be his goal. The eyeslits of his helmet kept moving towards her, returning to his footing, and then back to her as he drew nearer and nearer.

Quelana's heartbeat quickened. She stood and readied her pyromancy beneath the thick layers of her black cloak, keeping her eyes narrowed on the approaching stranger from within the crack of her hood. The golden fool, now only a dozen feet away, halted his approach and stood ankle- deep in the muck staring at her.

Neither of them spoke for a long while, then the sound of laughter rumbled from within the man's helmet and he pulled the golden thing from his head. Quelana squinted, remaining cautious, as he lowered it to his side and shook the chin-length thin strands of dirty-blonde hair from his face. His eyes landed on her, cold and gray, and his lightly-bearded mouth spread into a wide grin; his teeth white, straight, and clean. "Relax, witch. I don't mean to harm you."

Quelana shifted her weight to her backfoot. If the man was calling her 'witch', that meant he knew who she was, and suddenly she was no longer comfortable in his presence, exposed and alone. "What do you want?" She hissed from within her cloak, hoping to sound intimidating.

The golden man fixed those gray eyes upon her and took a step forward. Quelana lifted her arm, letting the cloak there fall to her wrist, and showed him the flames that wrapped her pale flesh and slender fingers, ready to strike; ready to burn. The man stopped, knelt, and stuck his torch in the muck before removing a shotel from a sheath at his back. He held it before him and turned the long, curved, blade of the weapon in a semi- circle, letting the torch flame play and dance off its steel, reflective, surface. He lifted his gaze back to her and offered another toothy grin. "You can burn me, witch, no denying it. But I would survive the first blow and I would be awfully angry about it. Could you hit me with another before I lunged forward and stuck you with my blade here? Maybe, maybe not. Neither of us really wants to find that out though, do we?" He waited for her to respond. When she didn't, he answered for her. "No, we don't. Snuff the flame, witch. I told you I don't mean to harm you... but I most certainly will however. Should it come to that."

"Answer me," Quelana snapped, feeling more uncomfortable with every passing moment. "What do you want, you fool!?"

"An end," the man told her, his face abruptly darkening. "An end... to all of this. This madness. This... wheel of madness."

"What madness other than your own are you speaking of?"

"We've met before, witch, and I know you know that," the man told her. "Think hard on it. You know me."

Quelana's brow furrowed beneath her hood. "I... you tell lies. Not only a fool, but a liar."

"What's my name?" The man insisted. "You know. Go ahead. Think. The first name that comes to your mind. What is it?"

"Lautrec," she said immediatley.

"Yes. That's it. You are correct. You see?"

Quelana shook her head. "What sorcery is this? What..." She stole a glance over her shoulder, growing increasingly paranoid of an attack. She wished she had been in hiding before the man had come. She had been intending to. If only she'd been quicker.

"I'm alone, witch," Lautrec explained. "Relax and clear your head. You're the only other one I know of who understands what I'm about to tell you. I know this, because I've told you before."

"You make no sense!" Quelana snapped. "It's your attempt to confuse me! To distract me! Where are your companions? Sneaking around in the shadows behind me?"

Lautrec laughed. "Witch, if I wanted you dead, you'd be dead by now. I wouldn't have shown you my approach from three hundred feet away. I would have snuck up on you and planted my blade into your throat. You have an incredible mastery of the flames, that much is true. But for a knight like myself? In your tattered robes and your bare feet? You think I couldn't have gotten the drop on you and disposed of you? I could have. I didn't. I do not want to harm you. I won't say that again. Now listen to me. The chosen one is almost ready to be born into the world, and we don't have much time."

"Chosen one..." Quelana echoed and a veil of confusion lifted from her mind. "You mean... my pupil."

Lautrec grinned. "There we are. Hm, should have opened with that. A reminder for next time if, Gods forbid, there is one. Yes, the chosen one is often a pupil of yours. Yet sometimes they are not. Sometimes they murder you. Sometimes, even, they never meet you at all. You are quite a crafty little hider."

"You speak of the Chosen as if he were many instead of one. Why?"

"Because I've learned the truth, witch. That this 'Chosen' one who comes stomping through our world, slaying beasts, ringing bells, filling vessels... if they were truly chosen to be the 'one' who ends it all, then they've failed. Time and time again. They have failed us. Or perhaps... we have failed them."

"How do you know this?"

"Because we are still here," Lautrec explained. He lifted his hands and took a look around the swamps. "Think about it, witch. You have a much, much, higher survival rate than I do during these cycles. The Chosen One is birthed into this world, completes all his or her tasks, sets off deep underground with old Frampt, and then slays Gwyn. Then they either light the flame or they do not. Either way - here we are. We live on. The world... it resets itself and a new chosen comes. You know this, witch. You and I have lived through this cycle for a long, long, time."

Quelana put a hand to her head and stared into the mucky waters near her feet. "This... can not be."

"And yet it is," Lautrec said with a sigh.

"How could you know things such as these?" Quelana demanded. "You are but a mortal man, yet you speak as if you're a God."

"It's taken me a very long time to peer into the abyss and see something more than the abyss itself," Lautrec explained, and Quelana noted he had take another step towards her as he did so. She wanted to burn him, but now... now she also needed to know what he had to say. "I believe it started with an inkling of familiarity on my part. A sentence spoken, perhaps. A movement. An action. A gust of wind that caught my attention. I can't be sure. Somehow, though, and at some point I realized that I've lived this life before. The further I thought on it, and more apparent it became. I haven't just lived it once or twice. I've lied it tens of thousands of times. Perhaps millions. Perhaps... perhaps forever."

Quelana began to see the face of her pupil. She had, for so long, thought of the pupil as one, but the face began to change and distort until there were many faces... too many to see clearly. She knew, then, that the fool was telling the truth. "The Chosen One... you are right. There are many."

"Too many, if you ask me," Lautrec said with a bitter grimace. "When I first realized our eternal imprisonment of time, I believed that the Chosens were trapped here in our world, and this was their punishment. But now I see it a different way. We are the prisoners, witch. You and I and every other inhabitant of this cursed realm. They aren't locked in our world, we're locked in theirs. And, quite frankly, I'm tired of it."

"Cycles... you spoke of cycles."

"Yes. The cycle begins when a chosen comes alive. It ends when they face old Gwyn. Then a new chosen comes. Sometimes they seem... fresh. Like they've never done it all before. But many of them... many of them return! They return with new knowledge and impeccable skills. They slay the monsters of this world with ease, rushing to the finish line, and to what end? Why, to do it all again!" The golden knight had grown increasingly angry as he spoke, and now his face was red and flustered, and his teeth were barred and clenched. "Do you know how many times they've killed me, witch?"

"You deserved to die. You're a bad man," Quelana told him. She was remembering more and more as he spoke, and now she had remember something terrible. "A wicked man! You kill poor Anastacia of Astora! The woman has no tongue, and yet you slay her! Again and again! You murderer!" The flames kissing her fingers grew and pulsed as her anger rose.

Lautrec rolled his eyes. "It always come back to that, doesn't it? Poor, tongueless, Anastacia. My business is my own, witch. You know nothing of it. Do not judge me as if you do. And you think the Chosen Ones are slaying me with some sort of sense of justice about them? Ha! Maybe a handful, but do you know the true reason why I've been slaughtered tens of thousands of times?" He stuck his free hand out and pulled the gauntlet from it. On his finger was a gold ring. "For a trinket." He laughed a bitter laugh. "A ring that aids them on their journey. That's why I die. If I'm wicked for taking the life of a mute firekeeper a few times, what does that make the Chosen? They've killed millions, and they show no signs of slowing down."

"Enough of this you fool!" Quelana hissed. "Why are you here and telling me all this? If this cycle is as endless as you say, there's nothing either you nor I can do about it!"

"Ah, that's where you're wrong, witch! You see, the Chosen One-this Chosen One, at least-is heading to Gwyn right now as we speak. I hid from him. Stayed cloaked in shadow until he passed. Freed myself from my prison. Trekked across Lordran. Slayed many a foe. Took that infernal wooden wheel down here into Blighttown, and now I intend to fetch you and make one last journey before Gwyn breaths his final breath. A journey away from Lordran and to the place where all of this begins. The Undead Asylum. You and I are going to be there when the new Chosen is born. Then we're going to find a way to break this cycle and put an end to this madness. Forever."

Quelana stood thinking on all of this new information. Only one question remained worth asking. "Why me?"

"I am the greatest knight in Lordran," Lautrec said without a hint of humility in his voice. "But even the greatest knight can not hope to accomplish such a monumental task as disrupting the very nature of the world alone. You are Quelana, offspring of the Great Witch Izalith, Daughter of Chaos, and Mother of Pyromancy. If I have you at my side, I need no other."

It was Quelana's turn to laugh. "Your mistake, you golden fool, is that you believe I would ever agree to aiding such a despicable, monstrous, and conceited man as yourself. Away with you. This 'cycle' you're so intent on ending doesn't bother me. I've grown quite fond of it, in truth. Now leave me."

Lautrec stared at her for a moment. A grin crept up his face. "Your mistake, witch, is that you assumed I was asking for your help. And, of course, that you believed me when I said I'd come alone."

A second man leaped from the shadows at her side before Quelana could ignite her pyromancy. His weight crashed into her and sent them both down to the ground. She winced in pain and cried out, trying to twist free of the man's grasp. Flames sparked from her fingertips, but if she sent them any further, she risked catching her own robes on fire. The second man was giggling as he wrestled her arms to her sides and began wrapping her wrists up in a length of rope. "I got her, Lautrec! I got her! Hee-hee! Fire bitch! Got her!"

"Bravo, Patches," Lautrec said dryly, stepping nearer to them. "You overpowered a frail women. And from behind at that. Now bind her quickly before she melts the flesh off your bones."

The bald man giggled. "She can't do that!"  
"She can. She will. Work quickly, idiot," Lautrec demanded.

The man's smile faded and he looked down upon Quelana. "You want to burn Patches you fire bitch? Hm?" He giggled. "Got you good, didn't I."

"Argh!" Quelana roared through clenched teeth, trying to wrestle free of his grip. It was no use. She felt her wrists lock together before her as he tightened and cinched the rope. Then he rolled her to her side and wrapped her arms to her body, running the rope around and around until she was bound from her shoulders to her forearms.

"Hee-hee," Patches giggled. "Got her wrapped up tight, Lautrec. She won't burn nothing now."

"Good for you. Bind her feet," Lautrec instructed, setting his shotel back into its sheath now that she was secured. "Hurry. If Gwyn dies before we've left Lordran... all of this was for naught."

"Her feet? How she gonna walk with her feet bound up?" Patches asked, scratching at his bald head.

"She's not, you idiot. You're going to carry her."

"Me? Carry!?" Patches snapped. "That's no fair! I don't want to!"

Lautrec knelt beside the man and fixed those cold, grey, eyes of his on him. "Really? Tell me more about the things you don't want to do, Patches. Go on... tell me of you complaints."

"I... I..." the man was clearly afraid of the golden knight. He swallowed, scratched at his head, and avoided eye contact with Lautrec. "Well, alright then. I'll carry her. Just don't see why is all..."

"Because we're in her domain down her. She could break loose, make a run for it, and we'd have to waste valuable time looking for her. Time that we do not have. So bind her and get her up. If you complain again... well, you know how I am when I get angry."

"Y-yes, Lautrec," Patches stuttered.

Lautrec nodded, stood, and plucked the torch from the ground. He faced the swamps and tucked the golden helm back over his head.

"Let go of me you fool!" Quelana demanded, pulling at her binds. "Release me and I'll only burn him," she said, peering through her cloak at Lautrec.

"Quiet, fire bitch," Patches warned, rolling her onto her back and moving to her legs. "Ooo, barefooted fire bitch? Can't afford no boots, fire bitch? Hee-hee! Tickle tickle!" His fingers tickled at the soles of her feet.

Quelana lifted her foot straight up and felt the heel slam the man's jaw. Patches wailed and fell back to his butt. She flipped to her side, got her knees beneath her, and prepared to rush off into the swamps.

She made it two steps before Lautrec grabbed her by the cloak and pulled her back. "No!" Quelana cried out as the mans arms wrapped around her and pulled her into his body. The cold steel of his armor was hard and sharp as it pressed against her cloak. "Let go! You have no right to do this to me!"

Lautrec stared at her. He reached up and pulled the hood back away from her face. Quelana hated having her hood down. She felt exposed, naked. She grimaced as the cool air of the swamp swept her cheeks, brushed through her hair, danced across her lips. She tried turning away from the golden knight, but he held her still, craning his neck to stare at her. "Well... the rumors are true. You are quite beautiful, witch." He stared a moment longer, Quelana squirming uncomfortably in his arms as his gray eyes flicked across every feature of her face. "Quite beautiful indeed."

Patches returned, muttering curses under his breath, and bound her ankles and knees right there on the spot as Lautrec held her. Then the golden knight released her, and the bald man took hold of her, giggling again as he scooped her up over his shoulder.

"Now let us make haste," Lautrec said, stepping into the swamp, his torch held before him. "We have a world to change."

Quelana's thin frame bounced off the bony shoulder of the man who carried her; her limbs and body bound and useless as she lifted her head and took one last, longing, gaze at her little spot in Blighttown. A spot she now feared she'd never see again.

 

 

**Chapter 2**

 

 

The trip out of Blighttown was, thankfully, uneventful. Lautrec led them across the swamps, the witch Quelana bound and slung over Patches' shoulder, and to the great wooden wheel that lifted travelers away from the stench and foulness of the grimy lands below. The platform creaked with the weight of the three of them, but carried them upwards nonetheless. As they rose, Lautrec dug into the sack tied around Patches' waist and retrieved purple moss clumps for Patches and himself to consume. Swallowing the moss, he could feel the sickness of Blighttown washing away from his flesh and his health returning. The witch seemed mostly unaffected by the diseased swamps, and so Lautrec offered her none.

At the entrance tunnel leading outside and back towards Firelink Shrine, the witch began to struggle in her binds atop Patches' shoulder, and Lautrec was thankful he had disposed of the infested barbarians who stalked the pathway on his way in.

"She ain't making this any easier, Lautrec," Patches whined, grimacing and grabbing handfuls of the witch's robes. "Fire bitch is hurting my shoulder!"

Lautrec haulted their advance and signaled Patches to set Quelana down. The bald man smirked, nodded, and dumped her to the ground where she landed with a thud in the dirt. Her hood had slid away from her face as she landed, and she stared up at Lautrec as he approached; the emerald green pits of her eyes shimmering with anger in the sea of pale, soft, flesh that was her face. "Get away from me..." she warned.

"You don't tell the Knight Lautrec what do do, fire bitch!" Patches snapped.

"Why are you making this difficult?" Lautrec asked her, ignoring Patches.

Quelana avoided his eyes as she spoke. "Why? You kidnap a woman, truss her up, and haul her away from her home and you have the audacity to ask why she makes it difficult? You truly are a fool, aren't you?"

Lautrec traced the line of her eyes down the tunnel and to the strip of sunlight that awaited them, leading outside and to the Valley of the Drakes. When he looked back to her, he saw something beneath that smoldering anger in her eyes. "You're afraid, is that it?"

Quelana's look snapped to him and her mouth opened, but she said no words.

Lautrec nodded. "You've never left Blighttown, have you? Never even seen the sun in the sky I take it?"

"I..." Quelana stammered, lowered her eyes, sighed. "No... I have not."

"Hee-hee!" Patches giggled behind them. "Fire bitch is afraid of the big bad sun! Hee-hee!"

"Patches, what is your favorite finger?" Lautrec asked the man without turning to him.

"W-what?" Patches answered between giggles.

"Your favorite finger. Which is it?"

"I... I guess this one?" Patches moved to Lautrec's side and wiggled the index finger of his right hand. "This little finger has made a good number of bitches like her moan, I'll tell you that. Why?"

"If you refer to her as 'fire bitch' one more time, I'll cut it off."

Patches giggled, but when Lautrec set his eyes on the man and did not, Patches' face ran cold and he began rubbing at the finger protectively. "She's a master pyromancer and the daughter of Izalith, and a lot more valuable than you. Show her respect or the finger is mine."

"Gods, Lautrec, alright!" Patches shouted, still rubbing the finger. "Calm the hell down!"

Lautrec turn his look back to the witch. She was staring at the end of the path again. "Look, witch, you are going out there. One way or another," Lautrec explained, dug the blade of his shotel beneath the ropes around her ankles, and cut them loose. "The sun is nothing more than a big ball of fire. You should be run at home beneath its gaze." He cut the ropes at her knees. "But if you fight us... run from us... waste our time any further... things can go badly for you. Do you understand?"

Quelana glanced at her freed legs before turning her green eyes on Lautrec. Her face was set in hard lines as she spoke, "You're going to burn for what you're doing to me, knight."

Lautrec nodded. "Fair enough. Some day I'm sure I will. All men must pays for their sins. But for now? Get up. And get moving. Patches, take point."

They proceeded like that all the way to Firelink Shrine; Patches leading them, whistling a melodic tune as he went, happy to be freed of the burden of carrying the witch; Lautrec at the rear, keeping a vigilant watch for ambush; Quelana between them, marching begrudgingly forward, her torso and arms bound in ropes. At the end of the tunnel, she put up some resistance to stepping into the sun, but Lautrec took her by the shoulder and nudged her forward until she stumbled outside. The witch gasped and winced as if struck by a mighty blow, but after a moment of realizing the sun was not going to melt her flesh, she stood again and began taking fearful, cautious, steps forward. Lautrec moved behind her and pulled her hood over her head, and though she spoke no gratitude, she moved at a quicker pace from then on.

The were quickly in and out of the Valley of Drakes, briefly trekking past the haunted New Londo Ruins, and then up the long elevator that carried them to Firelink Shrine. They ascended the spiraling staircase of old stone and overgrown moss, and stepped out below the bonfire.

Quelana halted before the barred prison set into the earth below the bonfire and spun on Lautrec. "My pupils have told me this is where she resides. And yet, here she is not." The witch's voice grew angered from within her hood. "You killed her. Anastacia. Even with all your knowledge of cycles and patterns and Chosen Ones... you still killed her. Why? If this world is destined to reset itself, why still murder the women!? My pupils expressed such great sorrows for-"

"Enough!" Lautrec shouted, and his voice was loud and angered enough to cause Quelana to step backwards away from him. She went quiet. "If there are a million lifetimes, I'll kill her a million times. Because I have to. And because she deserves it. No more on this. Move. Now." Even the mere thought of the woman was making his blood boil. He moved forward, spun Quelana around, and shoved her to get her moving again.

"What kind of knight are you to kill a helpless woman with no tongue," Quelana said quietly as she climbed the stairs to the bonfire above. "Pathetic."

"Speak of this again and you'll have no tongue," Lautrec warned.

The witch turned to glare at him briefly over her shoulder, but said no more.

Patches stepped before the unlit bonfire, kicked at the ashes with the toe of his boot, and spit into its center. He turned his bald head to Lautrec and raised an eyebrow. "Now where? You never exactly told me how we get to this Undead Asylum from here."

"The bird," Lautrec said, pointing across the arched stone passages that led underground to the Kiln of the First Flame. The giant black beast was there, perched high above, the black pits of its eyes staring down upon their party.

"The bloody crow?"

"Yes. And Frampt is gone. That means the Chosen is facing off with old Gwyn right now as we speak. We're out of time. Let's move."

"How the hell is the crow going to get us anywhere?" Patches asked, scratching at his head. "And how are we supposed to get the things attention?"

"Follow me. I've done most of the heavy lifting for us already," Lautrec explained, took Quelana by her bound wrists, and pulled her beside him as he quickly moved up a flight of stone stairs and around the high walls of the inner pool.

After a short walk around, they came to the base of a towering stone structure. A rope dangled down to them from high above, swaying in the cool breeze. "Climb," Lautrec said, taking the rope and shoving it against Patches' chest.

Patches swallowed, his eyes widening as he traced the rope up and up to the top of the structure. "That's a damned hundred foot climb, Lautrec!"

"Climb," Lautrec snapped. "We have no more time for chatter."

"Gods help me..." Patches whispered, touched his forehead, and then hopped up and grabbed the rope at the highest point he could before starting the long and difficult process of ascending it. "I suppose I'll be hauling the fire bi- er, well, the fire... witch up after me too, ain't I?"

"Yes. She couldn't weigh more than a hundred pounds though, if that. You'll manage."

Patches moved higher up the rope. "If I fall-"

"You'll die. Or be so broken I'll leave you for dead," Lautrec explained. "So... don't fall."

"Why keep the idiot around?" Quelana questioned once Patches was high enough to be out of earshot. "What use could he possible be to you?"

"I need aid," Lautrec said. "And there is little to be found in these cursed lands. I came upon him in the catacombs. He tried murdering me."

The witch turned her hooded face to him.

Lautrec grinned. "He tried. Obviously, he was not successful. I defeated him, and instead of ending him I made him swear his allegiance to me."

Sardonic laughter came from within the witch's hood. "Loyalty sworn under knife point is no true loyalty."

"No," Lautrec agreed. "But I'll take what help I can get, as temporary as it may be. Plus, the man's already tried to kill me once and failed. When he does inevitably tire of taking my orders, he'll try again. Likely, the results will be the same."

Quelana was quiet for a moment, then said, "A witch in chains and a man sworn under false loyalty. And you expect this foolish mission of yours to succeed?"

"I expect to change things. Or to die trying." The rope came tumbling back down to them, and Lautrec craned his neck back to see Patches had made it up and was waving his hand triumphantly. Lautrec pulled the witch closer to him and fasted the length of rope around her waist. "He's not particularly strong," he told Quelana as he bound her. "So don't squirm about too much if you don't want to lose your life."

"My life?" Quelana echoed. "You think I value my own life? If I die, according to you, I just come back once this world resets itself. Isn't that right? Back in Blighttown where I belong."

"Maybe," Lautrec admitted, fastening the final knot. "Or maybe this is the time I do change things and your miserable existence ends as a splatter right here at my boot. You can take the chance if you wish." He cupped his hands around the mouth slit of his helm and lifted his head. "Patches! Take her up!"

Quelana was hoisted off the ground, her bare feet dangling below her. She grunted at each jerk upwards; Patches pulling and pulling above. Lautrec watched her go, and when she was high enough, he could peer up and into the hood of her robes. Her thin lips were curled into a grin. He didn't like that. The sight of a witch smiling never meant good things. He'd learned that the hard way in another life.

"Hurry Patches!" Lautrec shouted. He watched as the dark figure of the witch was pulled the final length of tower, then disappeared over its edge. A moment passed, no rope came. "Patches! The rope!" Another moment. Still no rope.

Lautrec cursed and kicked at the structure. Either Patches had finally betrayed him, or the witch had a trick up her sleeve. Either way, it was bad. Lautrec turned on his heel and darted back down the length of the grassy pathway beside the tower. He spun around an archway, bounded up a flight of stone steps, and turned a corner at the top. An elevator pulley system awaited him. He rushed inside, waited until the pulley lifted him high enough, and then jumped outside onto the roof of the structure below. He'd watched the Chosen One do this. Several times, in fact. It was how he's tied the rope up there in the first place. He stepped to the edge of a grassy hill growing out of the mountain beside the roof and took a breath. A slanted stone pillar a dozen feet below, and another dozen away, jutted from the ground. It led to a staircase that would take him up to the top of the tower. He took a step back, judged the distance, took another step. He jolted to the edge of the hill, leapt with everything he had, and sailed through the air towards the pillar.

The gold chestplate of his armor clanged off the rock as he came up just shy of landing on his feet. His golden gauntlets grasped for a holding, but found none, and for one head-spinning moment - he thought he was going to fall. Then his boot found a foothold and he dug in and pushed himself upwards. He hit the ground running, barreling around the corner and climbing the spiraling staircase in twos. Out of breath, his heart pounding in his chest, he made it up to the crow's nest.

Patches was working furiously to untie the knots around Quelana's wrists.

"Patches!" Lautrec shouted, but the bald man paid him no attention.

Quelana did, however, and quickly stepped away as he rushed forward and tackled Patches to the ground. They rolled twice, coming just short of sailing right off the edge. Lautrec's helmet banged the ground, twisting it to the side and blinding his eyesight within. He roared and ripped the thing from his head, tossing it aside. It rolled and disappeared off the edge. He ignored it, choosing instead to wrap his hands around Patches' throat and squeeze.

Patches' face went from yellow to red to purple. His eyes bulged in their sockets, rolling around wildly in his head. His hands grasped at Lautrec's own, but the strength had run out of them. Choked, gurgling, noises escaped his lips that might have been his attempt at words.

"Release him," Quelana called over Lautrec's shoulder. "It was my spell he was working under. I charmed him. You're about to murder a man for something he had no control over."

Lautrec snapped his head back to glare at the witch. She lowered her hood so he could see her. Her face was scrunched up in sincerity. He turned back to Patches, considered it, and let him go. Patches was torn between coughing and desperately gasping for air as the color returned to his face. Lautrec climbed off of him and stood. He saw that Quelana was standing with her feet at the very edge of the crumbling stone floor of the tower.

"What are you doing, witch?" Lautrec demanded. "Get away from the edge."

Patches was still coughing when he spoke from the floor, "W-What happened? Lautrec? What the hell happened!?"

"The witch put you under her spell," Lautrec explained, not taking his eyes from her. "And I nearly killed you for it."

Patches rubbed his throat and clambered back to his feet. "She... she did? I remember her whispering in my ear and her voice was... it was in my very soul."

"Step away from the ledge," Lautrec said.

Quelana looked back over her shoulder. "A fall from here would surely kill me. Release me."

"Don't do it."

"Let her!" Patches protested. "She nearly got me killed! Demon-tongued wench!"

The wind picked up, sending her black robes into a wild dance around her thin frame. Her hood blew away from her face, and Lautrec saw there were tears in the corners of her eyes. "May I meet my mother and sisters in the life beyond."

"No!" Lautrec shouted.

The earth rumbled and a great, shrill, scream sounded from somewhere deep within the ground.

The three of them all went quiet, their eyes moving from the ground, to the sky, to one another.

"Gwyn is dead," Lautrec said. "The Chosen is about to make his choice. We have to go."

The earth shook again, and this time Lautrec used the opportunity to dart forward and wrap Quelana in his arms. She only mildly struggled. The rumbling had awakened some deep fear in her.

"What do we do!?" Patches shouted in a panic. "How do we get out of here!?"

"The nest. Get in the crow's nest," Lautrec commanded, pulling Quelana along beside him as he climbed into the bed of twigs perched at the structure's peak.

"This is bloody ridiculous," Patches muttered, climbing in himself. "What did I agree to following you on this adventure!? Sitting in a crow's nest a hundred feet off the ground as the world crumbles apart below us? This is insane! What do you expect to happen? That bloody crow isn't going to give a-"

The black wings of the creature came upon them so quickly, it was as if the sun itself had been blotted out entirely. Patches shrieked, and even Lautrec himself found his courage waver a bit. The witch said nothing, only stared at the great beast with curiosity.

"Oh, Gods!" Patches wailed as one of the creatures talons wrapped around his torso.

Lautrec pulled Quelana close to his body and wrapped his arms around her. The crow dug its talons down around them and squeezed him in its mighty grip.

"Can the thing hold all our weight!?" Patches pleaded.

"Let us hope," Lautrec replied.

He felt one final shake of the earth as the mighty crow spread its wings and lifted them from the nest. The cold air spiraled around them, flapping the witch's robes and pulling one of Patches' boots right off his foot. He screamed, but both Lautrec and the witch cradled tightly in his arms, remained silent. They watched as the crow carried them away from the Firelink Shrine, and the tower they had just previously been standing atop crumbled as the world itself seemed to be tearing apart.

Lautrec thought he had finally taken the first step towards true change. He hoped he was right.

 

 

 

**Chapter 3**

 

 

Even hollow, Abby could feel the cold biting at her flesh, the icy wind working its way beneath her robes, a deep chill taking up residence in her bones. She wrapped her arms tighter to her body and pulled her knees up towards her stomach. The stone floor of her cell was hard and jagged beneath her, but with no other bedding provided, she had to make due; her robes became her blanket, her own hat her pillow. There was a point when the hope within her had seemed to warm her, but as the days passed and the coldness grew, she began to come to an unfortunate realization, and it was sapping the warmth right out of her cell: she was going to die in here. Alone. And cold; so very cold.

At a point, she drifted to sleep. She did not dream because, she assumed, when you were hollow, the part of you that dreams goes hollow too. That made her sad. Sleeping as the undead was always brief, restless, and empty, and when she awoke, it felt like she had not slept at all. She wasn't even sure she needed to sleep anymore. And yet she did. Maybe out of habit, maybe as a last defense against the bitter and relentless cold. Maybe because in a ten-by-ten cell, sleeping was the only thing you could do.

"Skinny little thing, ain't she?"  
Voices in the dark; words riding the winds.  
"She's the one then. The one we suffer for."  
Abby opened her eyes. That wasn't the wind speaking.  
"Well lets get her up and get out of here. I'm bloody freezing."

With a surge of adrenaline, Abby reached into her robes, found the hilt of her mace, and pulled it free. She rolled to her side, sweeping the mace in a defensive arc and clambering to her feet in one motion. She stood, the corner of the cell at her back, and stared wide-eyed and alert at the surprise company standing there before her. The one nearest to her was a tall and bald man with a queer grin on his face. Behind him stood a knight in golden armor. He wore no helm, though, and Abby could see his face was handsome, though his eyes were gray and piercing as they looked upon her. Beside him was a shorter figure clad entirely in black robes. There were ropes wrapped around the person's torso, arms, and wrists, and Abby felt a chill run up her spine as she gazed into the shadowy nook of the prisoner's hood.

"What's my name?" The golden knight questioned, stepping forward and moving the bald man aside so he could stand before her. "Answer me, girl. What's my name?"

Abby's eyes darted between the three of them, she licked her lips, swallowed. "I don't understand... who are you? Are you here to free me, or... or to kill me?"

"Answer my question and we'll find that out," the golden knight told her. "Who am I? Where are you? Do you know these things? Answer me true."

"No!" Abby snapped. "You're not making any sense! Please! I've been locked up in here for..."

"Go on. How long?" The knight demanded, stepping closer. "Or more importantly: how did you get here?"

She lifted her mace with both hands and angled it before her to shield herself from attack. "Come no closer, sir, I beg of you!"

"Answers," he repeated. "Where did you come from?"

"Vinheim! Alright? My parents sent me to the Dragon School for sorcerers. I... failed. I was no good with magic. I took up the white arts, began practicing miracle-working. I'm a simple cleric! There no need to harm me! I-"

"I didn't ask for your damned life story, girl," the knight said, and by now he had moved within striking distance. "How did you get in this cell. How did you go hollow?"

"I..." Abby began, but could find no words. Her brow creased as she thought about it, but the harder she tried to remember, the more distant any semblance of an answer grew. She swallowed, shook her head, returned her gaze to the knight. "I don't know."

"Good. You shouldn't," the knight told her. "Now answer my final question. Who am I? Think. Look at my armor. Golden armor. Who am I?"

"I-I..." Abby stammered.

The knight lunged forward. Abby cried out and swatted at him with her mace, but she had never been much good with it, and the knight was clearly trained for combat. He lifted his golden gauntlet, caught her wrist as it was coming down before she'd gathered any momentum, and wrenched he hand down to her side. His other hand shoved her back up against the corner of the cell, and before she'd even seen it happen, he'd unsheathed a large, curved, blade, and was holding it against her chest..

"Please!" Abby cried out, closing her eyes.  
"You're hollow, girl. What fear does death hold over you?" Abby thought about it. She supposed the man was right. "One more time: who am I?"

She forced her eyes to open and study the lines of the man's face. Nothing came to her. He had told her to concentrate on the golden armor, so she did, but doing so produced no results. "I swear to you: I do not know."

The man's cold, gray, eyes fixed on her's and held, and after a few tense moments, he nodded, sheathed his blade, and released her. "She's fresh," he told his companions. "I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But at least she's telling the truth."

"Hee-hee!" The bald man giggled. "Fresh and hollow. A walking, talking, contradiction!"

Abby put a shaky hand to her forehead and took a deep breath to steady herself. "Who are you people?"

"I am the knight, Lautrec, of Carim," the handsome man said, bowing his head slightly. "The hairless gentleman behind me is Patches. He's quite stupid and not to be trusted. I'd avoid him on our travels."

"Hey!" Patches protested.

"Well it's true, isn't it?"

Patches thought on it, shrugged, and nodded.

"Who is your prisoner? They frighten me," Abby admitted, narrowing her eyes on the cascading folds of black cloth that was the third person.

The knight stepped beside them and, with a slight struggle to escape his grip from the person within, took hold of the back of their hood. "This is our witch. Daughter of Chaos, Quelana."

"Witch!?" Abby echoed, taking a retreating step further into her corner.

The knight pulled back the hood. Abby stared at the woman he'd revealed within, nonplussed. She'd expected some monster straight out of the stories her parents had read her as a girl. Hooked and gnarled nose, green skin, warts, yellow and broken teeth. She saw, thankfully, none of that. The witch was young - or at least appeared young. Her skin was pale and clean and soft looking. Her eyes were a pretty shade of green, and loose strands of her ebony hair dangled beside them. A rag had been tied around her mouth; her thin lips wrapped around its knotted center.

"She's... beautiful," Abby said. The witch's eyes landed on her's.

"Yes, unfortunately so," Lautrec admitted. "A shame she's such a dangerous thing."

"Why have you gagged her?"

The witch turned her eyes to the knight to glare at him, but Lautrec quickly yanked the hood back up over her head. "Our pretty little witch here happens to have a serpent's tongue. She has the power to enslave your mind with but a few simple whispers in your ear. My bald companion nearly lost his life because of the trick."

Patches grimaced and rubbed at his neck. "Lousy fire bit- er, witch."

"What power..." Abby whispered, enthralled with the witch.

"Yes," Lautrec agreed, though he stepped between them so Abby could no longer stare. "A powerful prisoner she is, but not the most cooperative. Hence the binds."

"Where are you taking her?"

"The same place I'm taking you. Away from this damned asylum. Back to Lordran."

Abby frowned. "You intend to free me then, but... what awaits in Lordran?"

The knight shrugged. "Everything? Nothing? Who knows. We are on a journey of change. One that has already been started." His mouth spread to a grin and he lifted his hands to gesture at the cell. "Surely you feel that deep, deep, cold?"

Abby nodded.

"We've created that. Step outside with me. See what wonderful change we've already brought."

The knight extended his hand. Abby swallowed nervously and looked down upon it, then back to him. She felt taking it was entering into some sort of pact with the knight and his companions, becoming part of them, and the idea frightened her. They all seemed so... strong. So experienced. She was a failed mage and a new cleric: what could she possibly offer them?

"I won't bite," the knight assured her, flashing another grin.

She forced a shaky smile in return and, with no other option, took hold of his hand. He bowed and lead her beside him out of the cell as the bald man took up the loose slack of the witch's ropes and pulled her along as well. The hall outside the cell was dark, torches hung in sconces in regular intervals lit the way, and it seemed even colder than her cell had. She hugged her arms to her body as they walked, the knight beside her leading her by the waist. Cracks in the wall at their right side gave way to a massive chamber. It was empty. At the end of the hall, a cylindrical room awaited; a long steel ladder jutting from the curved wall and leading up. Abby craned her head back and saw a white swirl of the outside world awaiting.

"It snows," she said.

"Yes. A blizzard in fact," Lautrec agreed. "It started just as we arrived here."

"Seems the Gods ain't keen on change," Patches added from behind them, snickering that queer giggle of his.

"I don't understand, sir," Abby said, turning to Lautrec. "What is this 'change' you and your companion keep speaking of?"

"Don't concern yourself with it for now. Just climb. You'll understand eventually."

Abby returned her gaze to the ladder and the world above. Her little cell behind her, she felt a surge of excitement. Her foot landed on the bottom rung, her hand took hold of one further up, and as she was about to climb, she turned back to the knight. "I... thank you, sir knight. For freeing me. I feared I'd spend the rest of my days in that prison."

Lautrec laid a hand on her shoulder and nodded. She returned the nod, smiled, and began the ascent.

The world was a white-washed, cold, wet, swirl above. Abby climbed out of the hole and had to immediately shield her eyes from the heavy downpour of thick snow. She took an arduous step forward through the shin-high tufts and let the snows land in her hair, on her face, on her tongue. She smiled; it was wonderful. She looked to the pale skies above and spread her arms, feeling a freedom that she'd never felt before.

The arrow pierced the hollow flesh of her chest so cleanly and with such ease, Abby hadn't even realized what had happened until she was staring down at the wooden shaft protruding from her torso. "Oh no," she whispered, cringed, and fell to the snows.

Her breath choked off in her chest and she could feel blood behind her teeth. She made a gurgling sound that might have been a cry for help, but even she wasn't sure. The snow was dampening her robes. She felt wet and cold and... alone.

The knight's face appeared above her a moment later. "What the hell..." he said, saw the arrow, realized what had happened, and rolled to the side.

As he did, a second arrow took the snow where he's knelt only a second earlier.

"Curse the Gods," he hissed, rushed back to Abby, and took hold of her robes at the shoulders. He dragged her back around the stone archway that lead to the ladder hole. He managed to yank her behind it just as a third arrow stuck the ground near her ankles.

"S-second... floor... " Abby croaked, every word a painful struggle. "Saw him... he's... like me. Hollow..."

"That's not possible," Lautrec told her, stripping the golden armor from his arms. "No hollow is that accurate." He turned back to the ladder hole. "Careful there, Patches. There's an archer up here."

"An archer!?" Patches' voice echoed from within the hole. "Well what do you want me to bloody do, Lautrec? I'm carrying the damned witch on my shoulder!"

"I'm going to kill him," the knight explained casually. He had peeled off his gauntlets and boots and was working at his chestpiece. "Give it a moment and then hurry up and take cover."

Abby touched at her wound, but her fingers caused a spike of pain. She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyelids shut till it passed.

"Don't touch that. I'll be right back," the knight said.

Abby looked over at him. He had looked so large and imposing in his golden armor, but without it he had the build of an average man; a dark tunic and breeches hugged his frame. "I'm... going to die..."

"You can't die," Lautrec explained. He picked up his chest piece, stepped to the archway, and flipped it outside with a flick of his wrist. A second later, the sound of an arrow head pinging off the gold filled the air. Lautrec slipped outside, became a blurry vision within the blizzard, and then disappeared entirely.

Patches came clambering up the ladder with the witch slung over his shoulder a few moments later. He scrambled behind the stone wall just in time; another arrow loosed and bit the wall behind them.

"Bastard!" Patches growled, setting the witch down beside Abby. "Shoots at me!?" He cupped his hands around his mouth and stepped beside the archway. "Kill that sneaky prick, Lautrec! Kill him good!"

"...dying..." Abby managed to whisper through her choked coughing. "Shot... me..."

"Quiet, girl, ya ain't dyin'," Patches explained. "You're the bloody Chosen One."

The witch lowered herself to her knees beside Abby and peered out at her from within her hood. Abby shivered, though she wasn't sure if it was from the cold, the wound, or the witch's gaze. The witch reached forward the best she could with her arms all wrapped up and took hold of Abby's left hand in between her own. Abby was amazed at how warm her skin felt as the witch rubbed her fingers into her palm. She closed her eyes and relaxed, suddenly not finding it nearly as hard to do so.

Somewhere outside, a scream sounded. It was not the knight's.

"Ha-ha! He got the bastard!" Patches cheered.

A few moments later, Lautrec returned. Abby saw, through her dimming vision, that he dragged a body along behind him.

Patches eyes landed on the body and his mouth fell agape. "What the hell... how is that possible?"

Abby looked. The archer was hollow. She'd been right. He was hollow and dressed in well-oiled leathers, boots on his feet, gloves on his hands, a quiver of arrows slung to his back. More importantly, though, he was alive.

Lautrec shook his head. "There's two of them."

"Two Chosen Ones?" Patches snapped. "That don't sound a little funny to you?"

"Look at him!" Lautrec said. "He's dressed like a man. He was far more accurate with that bow then any regular hollow could have dreamed of aspiring to. He's a Chosen One. Or perhaps... he's the Chosen One." The knights eyes flicked to Abby. "And she's not."

Abby winced and clutched at her wound. Patches eyes went from her to the archer and back. "This... doesn't make any sense."

"It will soon enough," the knight explained. "She's dying from that wound, and he's dying from my wound. We get them to the bonfire. Then we find out who lives... and who dies."

With that, the bald man took Abby in his arms, lifted, and carried her beneath the stone archway and into the blizzard. Lautrec dragged the dying hollow along beside them by the collar of his tunic. The witch came slowly behind them, and Abby saw with a sense of great wonder that wherever the witch's feet fell, the snow began to melt and die around her.

They crossed the short distance to an unlit bonfire, resting forlorn and forgotten amidst the swirling white chaos of the blizzard. Abby was placed beside it, the other hollow was dropped next to her, and Lautrec went and fetched the witch by her binds.

"Light it," he commanded, leading her beside the bonfire.

The witch's head turned to him, but Abby could see his gray eyes were narrowed on the dead wood set before him. The witch looked back at the flames, lifted her pale hands as high as the ropes would allow, and angled her palms at the bonfire, fingers spread.

"Wait," Lautrec haulted her, reached down, and plucked two twigs from the bonfire. "Alright, witch. Go on."

Abby's vision had dimmed to a narrow, shadowy, tunnel by then, but what she saw did not cease to amaze her. Red and orange flames birthed right out of the woman's hands, lashed at the air, and settled on the bonfire, blazing it immediately. The warm glow felt soothing on Abby's hollow cheeks.

"Here," Lautec said, crouching beside her. He stuck one of the pieces of wood in her frail, weak, hand. She clutched it the best she could and closed her eyes. "No. Awake, girl. Throw that into the flame."

"...flame..." Abby croaked.

"Do it now!" Lautrec demanded, and fueled by fear of his shouts alone, she meekly tossed the twig into the fire with the last of her strength. "Good," the knight said, standing. "Now you, boy. If you can still hear me, that is."

Abby listened as the other hollow hissed some quiet words. She wasn't sure if he'd taken the wood or not, because she no longer had the strength to hold her eyes open. She felt snow on her face, on her cheeks, and wasn't sure if the wetness there was the snowfall or her own tears. The witch must have taken her hand again, because she felt warmth there. There was a moment where it became apparent to Abby that she was dying.

And then she was dead.

 

 

 

**Chapter 4**

 

 

 

As the hollow boy and girl died lying in the snow, Quelana watched curiously from within the shadow of her hooded robes. If the knight had been correct about the trip in the crow's talons away from Lordran, the cell in the basement of the asylum that housed his 'Chosen', and the rebirth from the flames upon death... even Quelana would have to begin to doubt her uncertainty with him. She turned to look at him then, as the young ones took their final breaths, and saw his gray eyes were wide and housed a boyish excitement as he stared into the bonfire. Quelana looked back and where the hollow bodies once lay, only two empty trenches of snow remained.

The fire rose, red flames licking at the sky and searing the snowfall above. The sight of it... the warmth of it... it brought Quelana a peace she hadn't felt since the knight had stolen her away from Blighttown. Then, from within the fire, figures formed in ghastly, ethereal, tones. One moment they were smoke, the next they were ghosts, then they were the flames themselves.

Finally, they had returned.  
"Two Chosen..." Patches muttered beside her. "I don't believe it." "This is change," Lautrec said, nodding. "This is good."

The young man and woman seemed frozen in place for a moment, and Quelana thought them paralyzed. Then their eyes blinked and their mouths moved and soon enough they were peering around the asylum in a dazed wonder. The knight moved quickly to the side of the male hollow, unsheathed one of his shotels, and threw the boy to the ground.

"Hey!" The hollow cried out, but the knight was quick to follow up his attack by pinning his knee over the boy's chest. "What's happening!? Am I... dead?"

"You can't die," Lautrec told him. "Same as her, though it didn't stop you from trying."

The hollow girl he nodded to, Abby, was staring at her own hands, turning them over with a stunned look plastered to her face.

"Now answer me this: Who am I?" Lautrec demanded. "My gold armor, do you know of it?"

"What-? I don't understand what's happening!?" The boy shouted, squirming beneath the knight's knee. "I killed her!" He looked at Abby, then back to Lautrec. "And you killed me! Why are we still-"

"Be quiet and answer me," the knight interrupted. "Do you want my ring? My armor? What's my name?"

"I don't know! Get off me!"

"If you lie to me, I can't kill you, but I know plenty of ways to make a man hurt," Lautrec warned. "One more time, and think hard on it: What's - my - name?"

The hollow peered up at the knight for a long while then. Finally he said, "I - don't - know!"

"I'm alive..." Abby was whispering. "I'm not even... injured?"

Lautrec removed his knee from the boy's chest and stood. He looked upon the hollow for a moment before offering his hand. The boy hesitantly took it and Lautrec yanked him to his feet. "Either we have a pair of very good liars on our hands, or the two of them are fresh Chosen." He scratched at the stubble on his chin. "That's... interesting."

"Who the hell are you people?" The boy demanded, rubbing the spot on his back where Lautrec had wounded and killed him not a few minutes earlier.

"Do you always shoot first and ask questions later?" Lautrec asked, picking up the hollow's bow and handing it back to him. "You know, I am not quite as lucky as the girl you hit there. If I took that blow... you would have killed me."

"I was trying to kill you!" The boy protested. "The whole lot of you! I thought you were... well, hollow."

"Like yourself?"  
"I'm not like the other hollows," the boy snapped.  
"Well, you're at least right about that. And your name?" The knight asked.

"Benjamin," the boy answered. His eyes flicked across the rest of the party, landing on Quelana only long enough for him to grimace with fear. "Who are they?"

"I am the knight Lautrec of Carim," Lautrec introduced himself before standing and gesturing to Patches. "This is my... friend, Patches."

Patches nodded and couldn't help a little giggle from escaping his lips.

"My witch, Quelana," Lautrec continued. "You'll forgive her silence, I'm sure."

Quelana bit down on the gag in her mouth and glared at the knight from within her hood.

"A witch!?" Benjamin echoed, his brow scrunching up. "You travel with a witch!?"

"I do," Lautrec told him. "A powerful one, as well. Just stay away from her hands and tongue, and you should be fine." He turned to the hollow girl. "And this is... Abby, was it?"

The girl still look bewildered as she nodded.

"She's like you," Lautrec told him. "Chosen, that is."

"Chosen for what?"

"A good question," Lautrec admitted. "One we will, hopefully, find an answer for."

Benjamin looked up at the snowfall. The blizzard had subsided a bit, but the winds were still howling above. "Why did you ask if I knew your name?"

"I wanted to see if you were fresh," Lautrec explained. "Or if this was a repeat journey for you."

Ben's eyes narrowed on the knight. "You make no sense."

"Little does here," Lautrec said, gestured for Patches to come beside him, and began fishing something out from within the sack the bald man wore on his back. "Now, I expect cooperation from the both of you, less you wind up in ropes like the witch there. As a friendly gesture of our new alliance, I offer you this."

The knight pulled, delicately, from the bag two strange, black, shapes. Quelana took a step closer to try and make out what they were. The things he held were formless one moment, and solid the next. There was a queer humming coming from them, and white streaks moved about their ebony surfaces like ripples in water.

"What is it?" Abby asked, clutching her hands to her chest.

"It's what's going to remove the plague from your flesh," Lautrec told her. "Drown the emptiness from your stomachs. Return the life to your eyes." He extended a hand to each of them. "This is the tangible form of Humanity."

Benjamin was quick to take the odd, solid/liquid, lump. He turned it over in his hands, nearly letting it slip through his fingers. The girl was more hesitant, so Lautrec moved forward and pressed it to her chest, forcing her to take hold of it before it fell.

"What do we do with it?" Abby questioned.  
"Offer it to the flames," Lautrec explained. "And remove the sickness that death has laid upon you."

"That's knight-talk for 'you'll be human again'," Patches added.

This time, the girl was first to act. As soon as Patches uttered the word 'human' she stepped before the bonfire, cradled the humanity in her hands, and hovered them over the flames. Benjamin moved beside her and did the same. Quelana had heard her pupils talk of this ritual before, but she had never seen it performed, and so she watched with great interest; never lacking astonishment for the myriad of powers that fire harnessed within it.

The 'sickness', as Lautrec had called it, began washing away immediately. The gray and dying flesh of their arms and necks and faces took on color, the black pits of their eyes faded away in exchange for pretty blue pupils for the girl, deep brown ones for the boy. As the humanity spread through them, Quelana noted that the two could have been brother and sister. They were both of similar height, though Ben was a tad taller. Both had chestnut brown hair; the girl's falling to her shoulders in soft waves; the boy's short and unkempt. They both looked young, maybe no older than twenty one. Even their reactions were similar: they looked at their hands, at each other, smiled.

"I don't believe it!" Abby shouted, swiping the moisture from the corners of her eyes. "I'm... not a monster!"

"Not until you die again," Lautrec told her.

Ben's brow wrinkled. "What does that mean?"

"We'll deal with it when the time comes," Lautrec said, looking skyward. "We've been here long, though, and night will soon fall. I'd rather not be in the Undead Asylum when it does. We have to move." He lowered his gaze and fixed it on Ben. "One more thing, though. How exactly did you escape your cell?"

"Another knight," the boy admitted, scratching at the back of his neck. "Though his armor certainly wasn't gold. I don't know why he did it, but... he's dead now. Threw me a key down the hole in my cell's ceiling, laid down, gave me a few flasks and another key, and... well, just died."

Lautrec nodded. "Sounds about right." He turned to the big door across the courtyard and held a hand up to shield his brow from the snowfall. "I've heard of this part of the journey many times over. A great beast awaits us behind those doors."

"A beast?" Abby questioned.

"A demon, I suppose is a better description of what the creature is," Lautrec corrected. "The Asylum demon."

"How could you know all these things!?" Abby asked. The girl ran a hand through her hair and swallowed. "I mean... are you... are you a God or something?"

Lautrec grinned. "Unfortunately not. You might be, though." He looked at Benjamin. "One of you... both of you... neither... who can say, really?"

"I could be a God?" Abby said, staring back into the flames.

"A doubtful little thing for a God, ain't she?" Patches teased. "Are we going to get moving or what? You know what they say: Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana! Hee-Hee!"

"I'm ready," Benjamin said. "I've spent enough time in this place to last me a lifetime... or two I suppose, in my case."

"Hee-hee! That's the spirit!" Patches cheered and clapped him on the shoulder.

Lautrec crossed the bonfire and stepped before Quelana. She turned her head to avoid his piercing gray eyes. His hand fell on her arm and squeezed. "Look, witch, I know you're not happy with me for all I've done, but the reality is that there might be a mighty foe awaiting us on the other side of those doors. I kidnapped you so you could help us survive such encounters. I need to know you're on my side here."

Quelana stared into the bonfire, ignoring the knight, wondering what cruel game he was playing talking to her when she could not speak a reply.

"Hey," he said, twisting at her arm so she had to face him.

Quelana grunted and wrestled free of his grip, but her robes caught beneath her heel and without the use of her hands to steady herself, she tumbled backwards and fell, landing in a tuft of snow that sizzled and turned to water around her almost instantly. Her hood had fallen away, and so she laid there uselessly, snow dropping and melting away on her face, glaring up at the knight hovering over her.

"You need help with the witch, Lautrec?" Patches asked.

The knight's eyes held on hers. "No... go on to the door. I need a word with her."

Patches nodded, picked up what little gear they carried, and led the two young ones through the snow. When they were alone, Lautrec crouched beside her. Quelana stared at the man, wondering if she could ignite him without catching her own robes on fire.

Lautrec grinned. "A fire burns even in your eyes, witch."

She made flames rise to her fingertips.

The knight's grin widened as he looked down at her hands, then back to her. "If I remove that muzzle of yours... will you bewitch me? Put me under your spell?"

Quelana only glared.

Lautrec looked back at the rest of them waiting at the doors. "I suppose I can risk it," he said, leaned in so he could get his hands behind her head, and untied the gag.

The cloth came from between her teeth, and Quelana licked at her lips. She stared up at the man, doing her best to control her anger. "I'll light your bonfires but I will never stand beside you in combat," she snapped. "May the demon slay you for your sins. ...pathetic knight."

Lautrec shook his head, but his grin remained. "You're displaying an excellent example of why I should keep you gagged for the remainder of our journey."

"Go ahead and gag me," Quelana told him. "I have nothing to say to you or your 'companions'. You're on a pointless quest that will only end in failure and death and horror. As all things do."

"As your sisters did?"

The knight's words took Quelana by surprise. She recoiled as if struck by a blow, then her anger took over and she opened her mouth to shout at the knight-

-but he held the gag up and shook his head, and she closed it once more, regaining her composure and continuing in a quiet voice.

"How dare you speak of my sisters... you know nothing of-"

"I know enough," Lautrec interrupted. "I know the Chaos that took Izalith took them as well. Deformed them. Made monsters of them. I know you were the only one to escape." He paused, glancing up at the sky. "Witch, look around us. Whatever I've done by coming here, I have already changed things. This weather, the cold... the pair of Chosen that you yourself saw reborn in the fire upon death." He looked back down at her. "Who knows what changes await us in Lordran. What changes may have befallen the inhabitants. ...befallen your sisters."

"You..." she began, but then the weight of his words sunk in and she her mind turned to them. The faces of her sisters before the chaos flashed across her mind; pretty, youthful, faces yet untainted by the plague of destruction that had twisted them. "It's not possible," she whispered, shaking the foolish thought from her head. "What's done is done."

"But might yet be undone," Lautrec added. "I'll make you this deal, witch: Aid me against my foes, and I swear to you I'll take you to Izalith. Take you to your sisters. And then we'll see what changes I have made in this cruel world of ours."

"What good is the promise of a forsaken knight?" Quelana questioned.

"I've forsaken no knightly vows, witch," Lautrec explained. "The vows I took... I've fulfilled them all. And will continue to do so. Now do we have a deal?"

Quelana weighed her options, saw no gain in refusing the fool, and set her eyes upon him. For a brief moment, she saw the faces of her sisters again, but closed her eyes and they were gone. The chance that coming here had somehow saved them from the monsters they'd become was small... but it was a chance. "Fine. We have a deal. Return me to Izalith, and... my fire will destroy your enemies."

Lautrec's hands took hold of her shoulders and he pulled her to her feet. "Good," he said, pulling the hood back up over her head. "Now try your best not to bewitch any of my fellow travelers and keep the 'pathetic knight' insults to a minimum and I won't have to gag you."

Quelana held the man's eyes for a moment before nodding and stepping beside him. They headed across the courtyard and met with the rest at the doors to the asylum.

"Lautrec, I can't hear a damned thing behind here," Patches said, his ear pressed to the doors. "You sure there's supposed to be some big bastard demon behind it?"

"Positive," Lautrec answered. "Ready yourselves."

"What do I do?" Abby asked. The girl looked terrified in her white and red cleric robes, a mace loosely clutched in her right hand, a ratty-looking talisman hanging from her left.

"You cast miracles?" Lautrec asked.

The girl looked at her talisman, licked her lips, nodded. "Not well," she admitted, color flushing her cheeks.

Lautrec and Patches shared a look. "Maybe just... hang back on this one." The girl nodded, looking relieved.

Benjamin pulled an arrow from his quiver and stepped beside them. "I'm ready. What's there to fear? We can't die."

"You can't die," Patches corrected. "We can."  
"So fight good," Lautrec said, placed his palms on the doors, and pushed.

The steel bottoms of the doors ground the stone floor as they opened, sending a loud, echoing, tear booming into the chamber inside. A rush of foul, cold, air swept out from within as Lautrec muscled the doors open wide enough for himself to walk through. Quelana followed behind him, Patches behind her, and the Chosen came last. The room was a large, high-ceilinged, chamber that might have once been a church or a cathedral. The walls were haggard and crumbling apart, the floor as well, and a hole in the ceiling was allowing a stream of light and snow to tumble in from the corner.

"Gods save us..." Patches muttered, he had shouldered past Quelana quickly and stepped deeper into the room.

"What the hell..." Lautrec said.

Quelana stepped around the tall bald man and looked to see what they were so baffled by.

"What have we done..." Patches whispered.

At the other end of the chamber, a massive lump was spread out on the floor. Quelana squinted, allowing the thing to focus before she realized that whatever it was: it was alive. Or at least trying to be alive. It had a little head atop a massive, rounded, body, and from the temple came an enormous tumor that set the demon off balance, causing its head to droop to one side as it laid there, groaning. Quelana saw, with horror, that the thing had three arms protruding from its swollen body, but one of the three hadn't fully developed. It was small and weaker than the others and grasping at the ground, trying to pull the monster to its feet. Blood and puss was pooled around its face, and she saw dark red rivets trailing from the monsters nose. A black tongue protruded from its lip, licking at the blood as the demon's eyes rolled back into its head, forward again, and then darted side to side aimlessly.

"What is that thing?" Abby's small, frightened, voice came from behind them.

Patches turned to Lautrec. "There's your 'Asylum Demon', huh?" The bald man looked back to the creature. "Don't suppose none of them Chosen ever mentioned it was a deformed, crippled, monster with a tumor, huh?"

"We... changed things," Lautrec said, stepping forward.

The demon moaned a pathetic sound and its little arm began swinging again. Its eyes landed on the knight, but holding focus seemed to cause the thing pain, and so its head shook and more blood spat from its nose. The tumor protruding from its head struck the ground as it did and the creature howled a shrill, excruciating, scream.

The five of them stood there watching in silence as its eyes rolled and its tongue lashed and its head shook until finally Lautrec turned to Quelana and said, "Burn that thing, witch. Burn it and send it back to the hell it came from."

"You did this," Quelana said. "You wanted to change things and so you have. You never considered you'd be changing them for the worse. My sisters..." She thought of them writhing in pain as the demon was now and it made her physically ill. "What have you done?"

"Burn it," he insisted. "If not by my command, then do it to end the thing's suffering."

She looked back to the creature. It was pathetically trying to pull itself closer to them, but had neither the strength nor the understanding that only one of its three arms were moving. She turned to the knight, and the two stared at each other. Lautrec stepped aside.

"Maybe we can help it..." Abby whispered.

"Don't be foolish, it's already dead," Ben told her. "It just... it just doesn't know it yet."

"Go on and do your thing, witch," Patches said. "I don't want to hear it wail no more."

Quelana looked from the three of them to Lautrec then finally to the demon. She stepped towards it slowly, raising her bound hands as high as the ropes would allow, palms outward, and sending the flames circling her fingers. The creature's eyes fell upon her as she crossed the cathedral and it groaned and lurched its head at her, the tumor striking the ground once again and provoking a hideous shriek from the things black and bloody lips. The flames around her fingers spread to her palms and blazed higher. The demon's jaw moved up and down, a sound that might have been a whine escaping it.

Quelana stepped before it, just out of its grasping, under-developed, arm, and looked upon the beast. Up close to the monster, an incredible sadness took her heart, and she was once again reminded of the chaos the befell her sisters. The flames rose higher still around her hands and she whispered one word to the demon below them, "Rest."

Streams of red and orange pillars of flame erupted from her palms, encased the monster's entire body and head, and seared its flesh. The shrieks it had roared before were nothing compared to the howl of its dying breaths. Quelana had made the flames hot, though, and the demon was silent almost as quickly as it had screamed.

When it was finished, only the large and smoldering corpse of the monster remained before her; black and charred and very much dead.

Lautrec stepped beside her and looked upon the demon. He prodded its head with the toe of his boot to test its state of being. "You did well."

Quelana turned to him. "Don't patronize me, knight. I know fire. That was a simple task." She looked at the blackened head of the demon. "The question is, what other 'changes' have you caused back in Lordran by coming here. What other monstrosities await us?"

Lautrec stared at the beast for a long time before quietly saying, "I suppose we'll find out soon enough."

And with that, he gathered the rest of them, led them from the cathedral and back into the blizzard, up a short, stony, hill, and to the crow's perch. The great bird could be seen in the distance, a black hulking figure in the white chaos of the snow, and it was coming.

To what new land it was taking them, Quelana did not know.

 

 

 

**Chapter 5**

 

 

 

Atop the eastern tower of the Duke's Archives, Solaire stood gazing at the shadowy, white and blue remnant of the sun; a cold wind blowing from the dark ruins of Anor Londo, sending his Sun Cloak rippling out behind him. His eyes grew rheumy between his helm's eyeslits. He longed for the golden rays of light to pour from the heavens once more. He longed to feel the Sun's warmth; to drink in its glory; to battle beneath its watchful, protective, eye. Yet he knew it was a fool's hope-at least until Logan made further progress in his studies-and that the Great Cold that had swept across Lordran like a plague was all that awaited him atop the tower. It's all that ever awaited him anymore. Still, he came to watch; to hope. Hope was the last warm thing left in Lordran.

"Knight Solaire," the voice of his squire came from over his shoulder. The boy stepped beside him, bowed, and stood at attention, awaiting reply.

"What is it, Henrik?" Solaire answered, his eyes lingering on the dead husk of pale light in the sky.

"The Marvelous Chester has returned with word from the South," Henrik explained. "He is requesting to speak directly to Logan."

Solaire finally turned on the boy, frowning beneath his helm. "He knows no one speaks to Logan," and upon further reflection, "What's happened?"

His squire shrugged. "He asked for Logan, no more. I came to you, as instructed. He awaits answer in the main hall."

"Good, Henrik. You were wise not to disturb Logan," Solaire said, holding his tongue before he added, you would have feared what you found. "I'll speak with Chester immediately."

The boy nodded, bowed, and disappeared back down the spiraling staircase he'd come from. Solaire turned back to the blue sun once more, bowed to it as reverently as his squire had done to he, and followed.

He came upon the 'marvelous' Chester pacing the main hall of the Archives, hands clasped behind his back, and snickering to himself as he looked from painting to painting. Solaire eyed the man up as he approached down the library staircase, scoffing at his attire. The man was a warrior, of sorts, and Solaire was under the impression that all warriors should dawn themselves in the heaviest plate they could afford without restricting movement. Yet there Chester stood in his dirty, dark, long coat and leather trousers. His 'helmet' was a flimsy top hat with the mask of a jester dropping from its brow to hide the man's face. When Solaire had first met him, he'd thought painted, grinning mask was his face.

Chester turned to Solaire upon hearing his approach, the jester's mouth of his mask taunting the knight as he spoke. "I ask for the great wizard, and I am brought his lapdog. A shame."

"Watch your tongue, Chester," Solaire warned as he stepped to ground level and walked beside the man.

"Bit hard to watch one's tongue, isn't it? The wretched things are always slithering around between our lips," Chester spoke softly from behind his mask. "Some more wretched than others, of course." He laughed.

"On that we can agree," Solaire said, fixing the man with a stern look. "What news do you bring from the South? What is the Hollow Army doing?"

Chester shrugged, his gaze turning back to the paintings on the wall. "What the Hollow Army always does. Sitting around. Grunting. Groaning. Picking their balls, or at least the place their balls used to hang. Heh."

"Don't waste my time. You asked for Logan. This must be important."

Chester made a sound beneath his mask that might have been disappointment. "Yes. Right to business as usual, ey Solaire? How does one fit such a large stick up their ass with so much damned metal covering it?"

A flush of anger rose in Solaire's cheeks. If the man before him hadn't been the best spy they had, he'd have considered unsheathing his straight sword and challenging the fool to a duel right there in the main hall.

Chester laughed. "Relax, knight. I bring two pieces of news from the South. The first," he turned, strolled partially down the hall, and plucked a bound and hooded prisoner from a bench beside the wall. "Is this. The second... well, the second is why I wanted to speak to Logan personally."

Solaire fixed his eyes upon the man's prisoner. The captive was short and garnished in tattered and dingy gray robes. "Who is he?"

"She is Logan's precious 'firekeeper' he was so intent on meeting. Hadn't he informed his favorite dog?" Chester taunted.

"You bind and hood a woman like this?" Solaire snapped indignantly. "Have you no honor? Release her!"

Chester shrugged. "She's Logan's now. Release her if you wish, I was looking out for myself." He took the woman by the elbow and shoved her forward.

Solaire caught her and pulled the hood from the woman's head immediately. "My apologies madam," he spoke as it was removed. The woman beneath did not appear as he'd expected for a fabled and legendary firekeeper. She was young with a healthy complexion and soft, blue, eyes. Her hair, strawberry blond and clean, was pulled back into a bun behind her head. She set her eyes on Solaire and swallowed. She seemed afraid. "You have nothing to fear now, m'lady. I am the Knight Solaire, Warrior of the Sun. You are in good hands."

"If it was conversation Logan was looking for, he's in for some disappointment," Chester said. He brought his finger to the mouth of his mask and tapped. "No tongue on that one."

"Oh," Solaire said, embarrassed. He offered the woman a sympathetic smile. "My apologies, m'lady. I... I ensure you your treatment thus far has not been ordered by myself or my superior, Logan. Perhaps I can offer you something to eat? Drink? Your travels must have-"

"Do you wish the woman to want her ears removed as well, Solaire?" Chester taunted. "She's not hungry. I offered on our travels plenty. I'm no monster. She's a firekeeper. The flames are their nourishment. Offer her a torch if you insist on being so obnoxiously knightly."

Solaire glared at the man and balled his fist, but held his tongue before the lady. He forced his words with amicability. "The second piece of news, Chester, and then be on your way."

"I want to talk to Logan."

"No."

Chester folded his arms across his chest. "How long do you think the men within these walls will continue to take orders from a leader they can not see? They grow restless, knight. We've gathered nearly a hundred strong, and yet we sit and wait, day after day as this infernal cold grows deeper and colder and our enemies amass outside our walls. Logan must reveal himself."

"Logan is studying," Solaire said, and it was a partial truth. What he held back from the man was the fact that Logan was also most likely losing his mind. "He is working on a way to fix this infernal cold."

"Do you know what the men are saying?" Chester asked, shifting his weight and causing the crossbow slung across his back to sway from side to side. "Some say Logan is dead. Some say you killed him. ...some say he's fled Lordran, given up, headed for higher ground. Warmer ground."

"I assure you he's here," Solaire said, growing impatient. "But I can say no more. He will formulate a plan to counter the Hollow Army and reverse the Great Cold soon enough. Do not doubt the man's genius. You forget it was he who slaid the scaleless monstrosity that roamed this keep and took it for himself. Twas he who began taken refugees from the cold. Give him time."

"He's got less time than you think, knight," Chester said. "Mutiny is in the air. All it will take is one bold man to step forth and snatch it up."

"Is that man you?" Solaire asked, letting his hand fall to the hilt of his sheathed straight sword.

Chester looked at it and laughed. "Not today, knight."

"Then tell me the other news. I will bring the information to Logan immediately."

Chester sighed, hesitated, but eventually spoke, "The crow has taken flight from Lordran."

Solaire's mouth fell agape beneath his helm. "What?"

A snicker came from Chester's mask. "That's right. The crow flies once again. I saw it with mine own two eyes. I would have liked to inform Logan of such a wonder myself, but... I suppose his dog will suffice. Yes, the crow flies. And perhaps the answer to our suffering will lie in the beast's talons upon its return. If it ever does return."

"And you threatened to withhold this information!?" Solaire snapped. "I should behead you here and now for such treason!"

Chester laughed. "Go run to your owner, dog. Make sure to tell him it was the Marvelous Chester who delivered the news." He faced the blond woman and bowed. "Farewell for now... m'lady," he said with a final snicker, turned, and sauntered away.

Solaire watched him go, shaking his head. He despised men like Chester, and under normal circumstances he'd never fight beside them. Since the cold, though, the circumstances had become anything but normal. He became aware the woman was staring at him and chuckled nervously beneath his helm. "Apologies, m'lady. Here, let me see your wrists." He unsheathed his sword, taking note of the way the woman's eyes widened apprehensively as he did, and cut loose her binds. "There you are. I would never treat a lady like that man who brought you here, I assure you. I wish we had sent someone else in his place, but the roads are growing more dangerous to travel by, and he is, unfortunately, a master of remaining hidden."

The woman only stared.

Solaire's cheeks flushed beneath his helm when he remembered once again she had no tongue. "Ah, yes, well... er, I suppose Logan would like to see you. I'm sure once he speaks to you, he'll afford you a hot bath and anything else you so desire. Come, m'lady," he said and stuck his elbow out. The blonde woman look at it as if she'd never seen the gesture before, so Solaire leaned in and placed her arm around it, smiled, and led her off towards the prison.

The prison tower at the eastern wing of the Archives was, unfortunately, where Logan had set up his chambers. Solaire detested the tower. It was filled with the marks and scars of pain and suffering on every cold brick laid in its cylindrical walls. The massive staircase spiraling down to the ground floor where Logan resided was no short trek either, and by the time Solaire had gone up or down them, he was always winded and gasping beneath his helm. As the knight walked the firekeeper to the top of the ladder and assisted her onto the first rung that would take them to the stairs, he noted how queer the walls played with the sound of their footsteps; as if they weren't sure how to echo the noise. It gave the whole, chilly, dark, chamber a haunted feel that Solaire did not care for.

He joined the woman at the bottom of the ladder, took her arm up in his own once more, and began the long, winding, descent to Logan. He spoke to the firekeeper as they walked, "Logan uses this old prison as his study chamber, m'lady, I assure you you are no prisoner here. The man is... he is an eccentric, you see. His mind is brilliant, and as with most brilliant things, works in funny ways. Don't fear him, though. He is a good man. The Duke's Archives were captured by him. Once the cold began settling over Lordran, the men and women of the realm sought out refuge. Logan welcomed them all with open arms. It is... comical, in a way. It took a great cold to bring together the forces of man. The cold and the hollows, of course, but I'm sure you know of the Hollow Army."

The firekeeper's face remained frozen in an expression of fear and concern, and so Solaire went on. "Eh-hem, well, um... I recall Logan mentioning you were locked in a cell burrowed into the earth. Perhaps you do not know of the Hollow Army. Well, you see, some time after the cold began setting in, the hollows began fleeing to Anor Londo. All of them. They... they skinned and killed all men in their path. Now the rumors are that there are hundreds camped within the walls of the great chapel there. Wretched things that they are. Have no fear, though, m'lady. Once Logan is through studying, he will tell us what our next move is and we will sweep across the hollow's like a mighty ray of sunlight washing away the darkness."

He turned on the woman, chest raised and beaming, and awaited a reaction. She offered none, and so he walked on the rest of the way in slightly disappointed silence.

At the ground level, at the very back of the tower, piles and piles of books stacked to the height of three grown men standing on each other's shoulders awaited them. Some books were spilling off mounds of tomes to the sides, their pages open and ripped. More books laid across the floor, covers peeled back and an assortment of pages laid side by side in, what Solaire assumed, was some order of importance. Scrolls rested against the walls. Ledgers tumbled from the large wooden desk in the center of it all, though even that was buried in a sea of white paper. A dozen candles surrounded the study, and Solaire found it a near miracle that something hadn't caught fire and the whole thing had gone up in flames. "Logan," he called into the pile of books. "Are you the-"

A crystal golem came lumbering around one particularly high stack of books, the candelight dancing of the creature's blue, metallic, body.

The firekeeper beside him made a startled sound from her tongueless mouth and jerked at Solaire's elbow. He caught her and put a hand to her shoulder, "Apologies again, m'lady. I should have warned you. This... thing is Logan's pet." He turned back to the golem and nodded, though Solaire himself never grew comfortable with the idea that the monster had just show up at the gates of the Archives one day and began following Logan's command. There was a wickedness about the creature.

The golem ignored them and lumbered off towards the staircase, each of its footfalls seeming to shake the whole tower itself.

"Solaire?" Logan's deep, wise, voice came spilling from behind a tower of books. A moment later, the man himself emerged from within the shadows; the candlelight flickering across his dark robes, his face illuminated softly in the flame beneath his massive, wide-brimmed, hat. "My friend."

Solaire nodded. "How goes your studying, Logan? Have you made any breakthroughs?"

"I fear not, brave Knight of the Sun," Logan answered, stepping around his desk and approaching them. His eyes, though it was hard to discern in the shadow of his hat, moved to the woman. "My firekeeper?"

"Yes," said Solaire. "I fear the woman has no tongue, however. Chester delivered her not but a few moments ago."

Logan suddenly lifted his head to stare up at the top of the tower. Solaire looked away. He was used to these little moments of... zoning out that Logan had. He supposed genius came with its costs. When the man in the big hat finally looked back to them, he was smiling. "My firekeeper."

"Yes... no tongue, though. Chester delivered her," Solaire repeated.

"No tongue?" Logan echoed, pouting his lips. "Sad."

After a few moments of silence, Solaire realized he was expected to say something. "Ah, yes. It is quite sad. Poor girl. Chester had her bound and hooded for their journey."

"Mmm, sad," Logan said again and stepped nearer to the woman. "Open your mouth, my lady."

The woman recoiled from Logan and looked helplessly towards Solaire. Solaire nodded his head and rubbed at her back. "It's alright. He won't hurt you. He just wants to see."

"See," Logan agreed.

Slowy, and through trembling lips, the woman opened her mouth. Logan leaned in to loom over her and narrowed his eyes within the darkness of her gaping mouth. "Mmm, yes. No tongue on this one. We will drink to it."

"D-Drink?" Solaire stammered.

Logan moved behind a pile of books without reply and returned a moment later carrying a bronze chalice. Solaire peaked inside and saw a red wine swaying within. "Here, my lady," Logan said, a smile creeping up his face. "Drink and your troubles shall vanish."

Again, the woman looked to Solaire. He offered his kindest smile and nodded his approval. She looked back to Logan, fixed her eyes on the chalice fearfully, and took it in her shaking hands.

"Drink," Logan urged.

The firekeeper hesitated, glanced one final time at Solaire, and brought the cup to her lips. Her blond head tilted back and the red wine within funneled into her tongueless mouth.

Finished, Solaire took the cup from her hands and handed it back to Logan. "There we are, m'lady. You see? Tis only a bit of wine for a weary traveler."

"Well..." Logan said, his head cocking to the side. "Tis a bit more than that."

Solaire frowned and opened his mouth to question what meaning Logan's words held, but the firekeepers fingers digging into his arm cut him short. He spun to face her and saw the woman's face was wracked with pain, her hands clutching at her throat, choked noised gurgling from her lips. "Logan!" He shouted. "What have you done!?"

"Mmm," Logan hummed, stepping beside the girl as she choked. "Poisoned her."

"By the Gods, why!?" Solaire snapped. The woman fell to the ground and Solaire went with her, cradling her head in his lap as she collapsed.

"Do not speak of the Gods here, Solaire," Logan said, his voice taking on a sudden acridity. "They have no place in my study. They are cruel beasts and their time draws near."

"She's dying..." Solaire said as the woman stopped choking. An odd flash of peace came over her face as her eyes closed to slits and a faint smile spread across her lips. Then the eyes closed, the mouth with them, and the tongueless firekeeper was no more. "You've... killed an innocent."

"No one is innocent," Logan corrected, kneeling beside them. "Let her body go. Watch as one of the few miracles left in this wretched, cold, world takes place."

Solaire swallowed his anger and did as the man instructed. As her body left his arms, it dissolved into the dingy robes around her; as if the robes themselves had drank her corpse up. A warm light came upon Solaire's cheeks as he peered into the robes central mass, where a shining soul had birthed.

"The soul of a firekeeper," Logan spoke, quiet and reverent. "I've only ever seen one in my life. This is the second. It's... beautiful, isn't it?"

The light danced in Solaire's eyes, transfixing him, alluring him, paralyzing him. "Y-yes," he stammered. "It's... incredible."

"A crueler man would use the soul to imbue his alchemy with newfound power," Logan went on. "But we aren't cruel men, are we Solaire?"

"N-No."  
"We are good men, aren't we?" "Yes."

Logan nodded. "Then what we good men shall do with the woman's soul is..." He reached his arms over the lump of robes, cupped his hands, and rested his palms atop the soul. He smiled as he applied pressure downwards, and Solaire watched with astonished wonder as it sunk right back into the robes themselves.

Then she returned.

"Praise the sun," Solaire whispered.

The woman's pretty face appeared within the robes, then her hands, feet, and soon enough her whole figure was there once more. Her blue eyes flickered open once, twice, and then held. She stared, confused, at Solaire, then Logan, then the ceiling.

"Death has a funny way of rejuvenating a person," Logan said, the smile still on his face. "Speak, woman, for my hands have healing powers." And with that, he touched his hands to her cheeks.

She opened her mouth, her eyes locked on Logan's, and tried forming a word.

"Go on," he urged. "Speak. You can do it."

  
"La..." she uttered. "Lau..."

  
Solaire was stunned. "By the Gods she's healed."

"I told you not to speak of them. This is no work of Gods," Logan said. "This is my work." He looked back to the woman. "What is your name, firekeeper?"

"Please..." she said, her voice was tiny and frail as it whispered through her chapped lips. "I do not wish to speak. I do not wish to live. I have a wicked tongue. Please, I-"

"There will be no more talk of that," Logan interrupted her. "I've given you second life, my sweet lady, do not make me regret it with such dark words. I asked your name, now, return my kindness and give it."

The woman looked ready to cry, but she anyway, "Anastacia," she whispered. "Anastacia of... of Astora."

Solaire's brow lifted beneath his helm. "M'lady, I too hail from Astora!"

"Astora?" Logan said, his fingers sliding along the brim of his hat as he watched her thoughtfully. "That's funny. The blonde hair, the blue eyes, the jaw line, the nose, even the subtle vernacular of your voice led me to believe you hailed from Carim."

Anastacia's head snapped to him, dread in her eyes. She shook her head. "N-No, sir. Astora. Anastacia of Astora."

Logan's face was set in hard, cruel, lines beneath his hat, and for a moment Solaire feared he was going to strike the girl. Then his mouth broke into a smile and he laughed, patting the woman's forehead. "You can be whomever you desire, my sweet lady. After all what is a man or woman without their little stash of secrets? Mmm." He lifted his head to the ceiling. "You are free to walk the Archives as you see fit. There are bath chambers, food storages, wine cellars, bedding, lounging. You'll find most of the men gathered here are kind enough, but there are needs that take over a man's mind when they're not tended to, and so I'd warn you to remain as clothed as possible when in their company." His fingers ran along the brim of his hat. "You are not to take your own life, though. That, for now, belongs to me. Do you understand?"

Anastacia lowered her head and nodded.

"Good girl," Logan said, smiling. "And try not to upset the golems. They are violent creatures, I'm afraid, and are wont to destroy things they don't understand." He looked to Solaire. "Not much unlike men in that way, I suppose!" He laughed.

Solaire tried forcing laughter with him, but it sounded queer and flat in his throat and so he stopped. "Shall I escort the lady?"

"No," Logan said. "She can escort herself."  
He stood, offered her a hand, and pulled her to her feet. She looked between the two of them, bowed, and left them. Logan watched her go, rubbing at his hat brim. "Pretty little thing. A shame those cruel Gods deemed her fit to keep the flames ablaze."

"Is she human?" Solaire asked in a quiet voice when he was sure she was out of earshot.

"Yes," Logan said. "Everything I read points to as much. Probably had a normal life... somewhere along the line... before her tongue was removed, I'm sure." He turned to Solaire. "What others news do you bring me good knight?"

Solaire pulled the helm from his head so Logan could see the smile on his face. "Logan... the crow has left its nest!"

Logan's face was a mystery beneath the shadow of his hat. He stroked his chin and hummed, soaking in the information.

Solaire's expression of joy melted to one of confusion. "I mean... this has to be a good sign, doesn't it? The Chosen that you spoke of. The crow only has ever left to retrieve them."

"But we've already had a chosen," Logan pointed out. "And he failed."

Solaire sighed. "Yes... you don't need to remind me. But if somehow there is another..."

"Mmm, many possibilities," Logan admitted, nodding. "Too many to waste valuable time speculating. Answers. We need them. You will go and get them."

"Me?" Solaire questioned.

"You said yourself, Solaire, this could be very important. This could be part of the answer I've been slaving away looking for down here," Logan said. "Who else can I trust with such a task? Yes, you. Take who you need for the journey, but you must head it. I need to know what that crow will bring us back from the asylum... provided it comes back at all to this cold, dying, world it left behind."

"I... will do as you ask," Solaire said, bowing. "But, Logan, the men grow impatient with you. They want to see you, speak to you. We all look to you for guidance and... and as our leader. If I depart, their last weak link to you will be shattered."

"Mmm," Logan hummed. "I will... reveal myself in time. The men can wait until then."

"You'll be unprotected," Solaire pointed out.  
"Will I?" Logan asked, and on command his crystal golem lumbered out from behind a pillar and fixed its blue head on Solaire.

Solaire swallowed. "Alright, Logan. I'll go... I... I hope to return to you with answers." Solaire thought of that dead, pale, sun lingering in the sky. "And with hope."

"As do I, friend," Logan agreed. "As do I."

With that, Logan disappeared back behind his stack of books and candles, and Solaire took a deep breath, bracing himself for the long climb out of the Archive's prison. Later, on his way through the library, he came upon the little blonde firekeeper standing at the second floor railing. She was sobbing into her hands. Solaire hurried beside her and offered his kerchief and a kind smile, but the woman only spun away from him and hurried off without so much as a reply. The knight frowned, tucked his kerchief back beneath his chest plate, and headed off to the barracks to form a traveling party for the long and perilous journey ahead.

Praise the sun, he thought. I need it now more than ever.

 

 

 

**Chapter 6**

 

 

 

When the crow finally set down and nested once more in its perch high above Firelink Shrine, the knight and herself gripped in one of the beast's talons, Patches and the young ones in the other, Quelana not only saw the changes to Lordran, but felt them. The cold that had gripped every inch of the asylum they'd flown from had taken hold of the shrine as well. Icy winds rippled her black robes as the crow released them, and she discovered that the beast's nest was caked in a foot of snow where before there had been none. Below the perch, the world had been washed in a clean blanket of white. Quelana lifted her gaze to the distant bridges and fortresses that stood sentinel on the horizon and they too were buried in snowfall. She wondered what icy hell the foolish knight had unleashed upon this world, and if its cold grip had reached even Izalith; had reached her sisters.

She wrestled in his grip, glaring over her shoulder. "Release me. We've landed."

"This is... impossible," Lautrec muttered; his gray eyes drinking in the sight of the new Lordran beneath the loose strands of his dirty-blond hair. "No storm could have taken the land that quickly."

"You wanted your precious 'change'. You've got it. Now release me," Quelana repeated, trying to twist free of his arms.

"Quiet," the knight commanded in a hushed voice. His face has suddenly drawn into hard lines.

"Lautrec..." Patches whispered from the other side of the nest. The bald man's eyes had gone wide and apprehensive.

"I see it," the knight whispered back his reply.

Quelana craned her neck forward to look further down upon the shrine. There behind a grouping of stone pillars, she spotted what they had. "What further hells have you awoken you golden fool? Quelana could only see glimpses of fur and fangs and hooves as whatever monster awaited below passed behind pillar after pillar; a massive greataxe cutting a trench in the snow behind it as the beast dragged it along, scraping and chewing at the earth. The demon snarled and shook a tuft of snow loose from its furry shoulders before disappearing behind a stone wall near the dead bonfire.

"Taurus Demon," Laturec muttered. "It's not supposed to be here."

"Neither are we," Quelana hissed from within her robes and almost on cue a cold wind picked up and swept across the crow's nest, sending twigs and pebbles tumbling off the ledge to a hundred foot drop below.

 

 

 

"What's happening?" The young cleric girl, Abby, whined. Both she and the boy, Benjamin, where knelt beside Patches staring down at the horror below with fearful expressions frozen on their youthful faces. "What is that thing?"

"I don't care," Ben said and reached back to pull his bow free. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it, drawing aim. "All I need is a clean shot."

"Put it down, boy," Lautrec warned. "You'll only awake the demon's fury."

"I'll stick him between the eyes," Benjamin said, pulling the bow taught. "Blind him."

"Too small of a target. You'll miss. Put it down. Now," Lautrec commanded.

Ben looked over, saw the stern expression on the knight's face, and lowered the bow. Abby crawled to the very edge of the nest, the snowfall already gathered in the soft ringlets of her chestnut-brown hair, and clasped her hands to her heart, watching below. "Perhaps... it doesn't mean us any harm."

Patches snorted laughter. "Perhaps we should send you down to go and ask it that question, girl. Why don't you... try jumping? Heh."

"If I was sure I could survive the fall, I would," Abby replied earnestly. Quelana noted the girl wasn't aware she was being mocked.

"All of you be quiet," Lautrec said. "We wait the beast out. He'll wander off eventually."

"If it doesn't?" Patches asked.

"It will."

And so they waited. The demon lumbered back and forth, his dark fur flashing as he passed between pillars. At a point, the beast drove its greataxe into the dirt and roared, but whatever had riled him up must have passed; he pulled the axe free and continued pacing around aimlessly. The demon worked its way towards the bonfire and sniffed at it.

"No..." Lautrec muttered. "The fire is... out."

Quelana hadn't realized it earlier, but the knight was right. Not even the smallest of embers grew within the bonfire's kindling. She turned back to see the knight's face. "Either your poor mute victim has gone free of her prison... or she's already dead."

A myriad of emotions washed across Lautrec's face as he stared down at the bonfire. Finally, he whispered, "She's not dead... not yet."

 

 

 

"How could you possibly know that?"  
"I know," Lautrec answered, and said nothing more on the subject. "Oh my," Abby cried out. "Look!"

Below, now that the demon had turned its back on their position, the monster's deformity, like the Asylum Demon before it, was clearly visible. A second head hung limply from the creature's shoulders, dangling down near its elbow from a thin neck, swinging side to side with each of the demon's steps. The unformed head's mouth was lined with fangs even sharper than its full head, and Quelana could see a pink tongue lashing at the falling snow as it hung near upside down.

"You're responsible for all this," Quelana whispered back over her shoulder at the knight. "You've unleashed hell upon Lordran in your foolish quest for change. Whatever cruel Gods used to watch over us... surely they've abandoned us now."

"You watch your tongue, witch," Patches warned from the other side of the nest.

"No, she's right," Lautrec admitted. "I take full responsibility for this. I intended to break the maddening, eternal, cycle of this world and I have. I never expected there to be no consequences. If we have to slay a few deformed demon's as a result... so be it."

"And this cold?" Quelana asked. "What if it has no end? What if it only grows worse? What-"

Lautrec's hand landed over her mouth. "We're spotted," he said, staring down at the shrine.

Quelana shifted her eyes to follow his gaze and saw what he'd seen: the demon's second head had two, beady, red eyes nested in the glowing pits below its bulky forehead. They were gazing upwards, staring at the crow's nest as it swung side to side. The head's mouth snarled into a grimace and the thing unleashed a shrill, piercing, whine that sounded like the dying wail of some pain-wracked bird. The demon's top head swung around, its eyes finding their party atop the nest as well, and it bellowed a great roar, burying its axe into the earth and beating at its own chest with its free hand.

"Well, shit," Patches cursed and pulled a shortsword from its sheath at his waist. "Was really hoping we wouldn't have to fight the giant demon with two heads today, you know."

Quelana shook her head free from the knight's hand. "Untie me, you fool! I will burn the beast."

"You will run for Blighttown the first chance you get," Lautrec said,

 

 

 

standing and unsheathing his dual shotels.

"Be that as it may, I will end that monster's suffering," Quelana insisted, rolling to her back and clenching her fists. "Now cut me loose. You need me."

Below, the Taurus Demon roared again, closer this time, and Quelana felt the stone foundation they were perched upon shake as if struck by a mighty blow. Lautrec looked from her, to the edge of the perch, and back. He licked his lips and sighed. "Alright, witch. Don't make me regret this," he warned, knelt, and untied the knot binding her torso and upper arms.

The demon screamed again and the perch rumbled.

Quelana tugged at the rope left around her wrists. "Free my hands."

"Don't push it," Lautrec said, taking her by the elbow and pulling her to her feet. He took up the loose slack coming from her wrists and tossed it to Abby. "Hold on to that. If she runs, pull her back, understood?"

The girl's face wrinkled with confusion. "W-What? Why me? I don't-" "What else can you do?" Lautrec asked.

Abby opened her mouth to retort, a look of realization came across her face, and she closed it again. "...okay."

"I'll flank around it!" Ben said, stepping beside the golden knight and pulling a dagger from its sheath. "I'm good at staying hidden. I'll-"

"Stay here," Lautrec cut him off. "And if the demon looks like it's gaining the upper hand on Patches or myself, hit it with an arrow to distract it."

Benjamin frowned. "Yes, but what if-"

"I wasn't asking," Laturec said. He turned to Patches. "You're the first one down. The demon is deceptively quick and has quite the reach with that axe of his, so I'd suggest you hit the ground running."

The bald man didn't look pleased, but unlike the other two, he didn't contest the knight's command. Instead, he gripped his sword a bit tighter in his hand, moved to the end of the perch where the rope they'd used to make their ascent here in the first place awaited, and took hold of it. "Don't leave me waiting long," he said with a wink, a grin, and a leap over the side, rope in hand.

The perch shook again, this time hard enough for the stone floor to crack at the corner and drop a slate of rock loose to plummet below. Lautrec took the rope up and stuck it forcefully into Quelana's hands. "Remember I gave you my word to see you back to Blighttown, witch. Consider that before you go burning things you shouldn't down there."

 

 

 

"I don't know what or whom you might be referring to," Quelana said, lifting her hands up near the knight's face and commanding a small lick of flames to dance from her fingertips.

Lautrec recoiled from the fire and frowned. He said, "Who knows what horrors await you in Blighttown now? You might need a knight such as myself for safe passage," then, turning to Abby, "Keep a short leash on her."

Quelana turned back to the girl and squinted. Abby's cheeks flushed with color and she lowered her gaze. Quelana shook her head, tightened her grip around the rope, and lowered herself over the edge to rappel down. The descent was brief and relatively easy and then her feet were touching the snowy soil of Lordran. Patches was nowhere to be seen and, thankfully, neither was the demon. Quelana lifted her hands once more and cursed the knight for leaving them bound. Abby was beside her a moment later, the slack of Quelana's binds in her hand. When Quelana fixed her with another glare, the girl swallowed and raised her arms defensively. "I-I'm just doing as the knight says. Please, I... don't wish to be burned."

"I'm not going to burn you," Quelana told her, and for a second she considered leaning closer to the girl and whispering an enchantment in her ear, but then Lautrec had dropped beside them as well and she put the thought aside.

"What are you doing?" He whispered at Abby, shotels clenched in his golden gauntlets. "Take her and move. We have to split up and get around the creature."

"Oh, yes," Abby said, shaking her head and biting at her lip. She turned to Quelana, swallowed, and nervously tugged at the rope.

If the girl wasn't so damned frightened, Quelana might have put up a struggle, but the girl was putting herself through enough stress already, and so she went obediently enough. Lautrec rushed past them, shotels at his sides, crouched for stealth. He slipped around a wall of stone, tufts of snow flailing up behind his golden heels. Abby led her around the other way taking slow, cautious, steps, stopping every few seconds when she would hear the demon roar from somewhere near. Quelana remained silent, allowing the girl to take them further and further away from the others, but she had intentions of her own. Somewhere beyond the wall, Patches shouted, and the demon bellowed a war cry. She heard an arrow loosed from the perch above and the boy, Benjamin, shout "Go!". The sound of stone splintering apart and crumbling filled the air and Abby gasped and lifted a trembling hand to her lips.

They were approaching the edge of the wall that would wrap around and lead them back out to the main clearing of the bonfire, and Quelana saw her window of opportunity closing shut. She stopped walking, and when

 

 

 

Abby ran out of slack, the sudden tug at the rope almost caused her to loose her footing. She turned back, doe-eyed and confused, and gently pulled at the rope. "Come on! We have to-"

"Come to me, girl," Quelana interrupted, walking forward and taking up the slack in her own hands so it shortened and shortened as she neared. "Let me tell you something."

"What are you doing?" Abby whispered, her brow raised. "Are you going to... hurt me?"

"No, sweet girl, nothing like that," Quelana assured her, and when the slack had all been taken up between them, she pulled the girl closer to her and pressed her lips beside Abby's ear. The words she spoke, not even Quelana herself could truly comprehend. They were old words, ancient words, and when she whispered them, it was as if something just as old and ancient was speaking through her, moving her tongue, manipulating the air. She felt the girl stiffen beside her and then suddenly go limp. Quelana took her in her arms and lowered her to the snow earth, resting her beside the wall.

"Untie the knot that binds my hands," Quelana commanded, holding her wrists out for the girl to free.

"Mmm," Abby moaned, her eyes rolling in her head. "I... I..."

"You are under my spell for now," Quelana said, growing impatient. "Now untie the knot."

Abby's eyes fell on the knot, focused, but then looked away. "Wh... why?"

Quelana mouth fell agape. She had been using the Undead Rapport spell for as long as she could remember. She'd used it on her pupils, on her enemies, even her own sister once. None had ever resisted it. "Did you not hear me? I told you to-"

"No," Abby said, shaking her head. She was groggy, listless, but somewhere within the girl her consciousness remained her own.

Quelana rose, nonplussed, and stared at the girl. Beyond the wall, a man- Quelana couldn't make out whether it had been Lautrec or Patches- shouted again, and the ground trembled with a mighty blow. She had no time to puzzle over the anomaly before her. She took the slack of her rope up in her still-bound hands and moved towards the edge of the wall. Before she left, she turned back to the girl and said, "Stay where you are. You'll be safe," and then quickly sprinted down the narrow passage beyond.

Peering out to the bonfire clearing, she could see no man or demon in sight, only the white blanket of snow that had seemed to wrap every bit of Lordran in its embrace. In the pale blue sky beyond, a dead husk of light

 

 

 

hung in the sky as snowfall rained from its belly. The great fire in the sky even runs cold, Quelana thought. Mother Izalith save us. And with that, she made a dash for the spiraling stairs that would lead her back home.

Patches body sailing through the air broke her line of sight. The bald man slammed the earth, sliding in the thick carpet of snow into a nearby stone structure and crying out in pain. There was blood coming from his shoulder. The Taurus Demon came lumbering after him from below the shrine's arched passages, axe trailing along beside him. On ground level, Quelana found the monster even more horrifying. He towered in the air, fifteen feet high, and his dagger-lined mouth was snapping at the air as he rushed forward. His axe came up, and he crouched back on his haunches ready to leap.

Lautrec came out from below the arches as well, his fingers tucked between his lips, and gave a whistle. The demon's deformed, limp, head screeched, and the top head turned to face the golden knight. Lautrec pulled his second shotel free from its sheath and moved quickly behind the monster, pulling its attention from Patches. The beast's eyes locked on him and it's mouth snapped at the falling snows between them. Even from Quelana's position two dozen feet away, she could smell the necrotic odor of the creature's breath poison the air. You're wasting time, she realized and turned to run.

Her foot had only fallen on the first step before she stopped herself. You've run before, Quelana, she thought, and everything you left behind became ruins. She turned back just in time to see the knight roll away from a wide, sweeping, blow of the demon's axe. She owed neither him nor any of the rest of them any allegiance. She was their prisoner, after all, but the thought of running away again-the cowardice of abandonment-did not sit well in her mind.

Lautrec shouted his own war cry and leapt at the demon with both shotels clutched high above his head in his gaunlet-clad fists. Their blades ripped down the beast's thigh, spraying a trail of near-black blood from the wound, and prompting a shrill wail of pain from the thing before it backhanded the knight aside. Lautrec tumbled backwards, caught himself, and stood. He shouted again and moved forward, but a rock must have been hidden beneath the snowy earth, for Quelana saw him stumble and fall to a knee. The Taurus Demon used the opportunity and drove its greataxe down, forward, and then upwards. The flat body of its steel blade caught Lautrec under the chest and thrust him up and backwards. He sailed backwards through the air, landing and sliding away into the snow on his back. His eyes squeezed shut and he clenched his teeth, sucking in air. The demon gave chase to his position.

Quelana looked from the battle scene to the stairs and back. She could never take back the regretful decision to flee from Izalith while her sisters were deformed by the chaos that took it... but she could certainly prevent any new regrets. The Taurus Demon lifted its greataxe over its

 

 

 

head and moved forward-

-and Quelana rushed towards it to intercept. The beast's eyes flicked from Lautrec's fallen body to her, and the demon changed its course. She lifted her hands up parallel to her shoulders and angled her palms at the beast, fingers spread wide. It roared, brought its greataxe down at her, and-

-flames erupted from her hands, birthing a chaotic circle of searing, scorching, red and orange destruction. The fire spread out in a wide circle, acting both as a shield from the demon's blow as well as a counter attack of her own. It screeched and reeled back on its heel to escape the heat, but the fire rushed forward, sweeping across its body in a pillar of flame. The thing's fur caught, and by the time her flames had dissipated, the demon had birthed its own flames on its shoulders and back and thighs. Its head rolled back on its neck and it wailed to the sky before dropping into the snow and rolling back and forth, desperate to quell the fires taking its fur.

Lautrec clambered to his feet. He looked from the demon to her, nodded his thanks, and moved in to attack the beast, shotels in hand. The demon rose, the fires out, but his fur blackened and thick with ash.

It's not abandonment. You helped. Now run, Quelana told herself and turned to do just that.

"Witch!" Lautrec shouted after her. "Stay and fight! I need-"

But his words were cut short when the demon's claw nearly took his head from his golden shoulders. Quelana hurried around the corner, took the spiraling stairs two at a time, and rushed past the empty caged hole in the earth towards the second stairwell that would lead to the elevator... and to home.

She was halfway towards them when the Taurus Demon's hulking figure blotted out the entire sky. Quelana looked, wide-eyed and frightened, upwards and saw the thing had leaped down from the top level and was looking to drive its axe into her. She side-stepped and rolled out of the way as the greataxe chewed a massive chunk of dirt and soil and snow from the ground. The demon landed with a booming thud and roared.

Quelana rolled to her back-arduously with her hands bound-and faced the demon. She lifted her hands and tried unleashing another burst of flame, yet none came. She had expended much of her inner fire bewitching the girl earlier and then attacking the demon and she needed time to recharge. Time that she did not have.

Lautrec came sailing down after the demon, looking to plunge his shotels down atop the creature's back, but the deformed, little, head hanging from its shoulders screeched a warning, and the Taurus Demon spun and lifted its massive claw upwards. Lautrec was caught in the demon's grip,

 

 

 

shaken like a play doll, and then thrust down into the ground. He lay limp and injured and possibly dead beside the empty cage where he had, ironically, murdered the woman within countless times. The demon snorted victory, turned back to Quelana and raised its greataxe.

She could see Benjamin loosing arrow after arrow down upon the monster from the crow's perch, but half were missing and the other half were simply bouncing off the creature's thick shoulders. Lautrec lay limp and unconscious, and Quelana realized it was over. As the demon neared, she lowered her hands and forced herself to stare the monster down as it came to end her. Forgive me my sisters, she thought. May mercy find you.

"Stop!"

Abby came stumbling down the stairs behind the demon, clutching to the wall for support as she neared. "Stop," she spoke again, resting a hand to her forehead and shaking snow from her thick fall of hair.

"What are you doing you foolish girl!?" Quelana shouted. "I told you to stay put! Now the thing will kill us all!"

"No," she said, shaking her head, and then spoke softly to the demon, "You won't hurt anyone anymore."

The Taurus Demon turned to face her, cocking its head sideways as its beady eyes narrowed upon her. It only studied her quietly for a moment before a great growl erupted from its mouth and its greataxe came up over its head, shaking in the air furiously.

"Stop it," she said, taking a step forward, her hands at her sides.

"Foolish child," Quelana whispered, shaking her head. She tested her inner flame, but found it was still not ready to burn. She was helpless but to watch as the girl moved closer and closer and the demon grew angrier and angrier. Once she was in striking distance, though, the beast's axe lowered a bit, and as Abby stepped even closer, the demon seemed to grow confused.

"Still your rage, beast," Abby commanded. "We mean you no further harm and expect none in return."

Miraculously, the demon's greataxe dropped from its hand. Its eyes watched the girl who stood not even half of its height step right up to its belly and rest her hand on its leg. "Lower yourself so I may look upon you," Abby spoke softly.

Quelana was speechless as she watched the lumbering monster who had just torn apart two grown men and nearly beheaded her lower to its knee and stare at the girl before it. Abby smiled and reached for the thing's furry neck. "I don't believe it..." Quelana whispered, climbing to her feet and approaching the baffling scene before her. She looked from the calm,

 

 

 

almost seren-looking, demon to Abby. First the girl had resisted her spell, and now this. "What are you?" Quelana asked.

Abby was still smiling as her hands stroked the demon's fur. "The Chosen One, aren't I? That's what you all told me, at least."

"No, girl..." Quelana said, swallowing a sudden dryness in her throat. "You are... something else."

Lautrec was back on his feet, but leaning up beside the barred hole in the dirt. His fists were wrapped around the bars and he was breathing very heavily. When he turned back to look upon the unusual sight of Abby and the kneeling demon, his face was red and furious. His shotels were back in his hands. He approached.

"No," Quelana told him, quickly stepping around the demon to block his path. "Can't you see the girl has subdued the beast? You don't have to-"

He shoved her out of the way. "You ran. You don't get a say in this anymore."

"I saved your life!" Quelana protested as she stumbled back and fell into the snow.

"Only to abandon it the next chance you got," Lautrec said moving towards the demon.

"It wasn't abandonment!" Quelana snapped.

Lautrec ignored her and walked up next to Abby, staring at the demon with a look of both wonder and hatred gripping his face.

"Please," Abby begged. "Battle is in this creature's nature. It wasn't his fault that he attacked. You have to-"

Lautrec shoved her down as well, and without a further word, he buried his shotel into the demon's jugular, a spray of dark blood painting his golden gauntlets with death. Abby screamed, tears swelling in his eyes, but a rage had taken hold of the knight and he began digging his shotels into the creature's throat in quick, furious, succession. And yet, the demon did not fight back. It only fell to its side and choked on its own blood as the knight dug into its throat.

It was dead long before Lautrec stopped hacking away.

Abby was kneeling in the snow, her face buried in her palms, softly sobbing. Quelana stepped beside her, knelt, and put her hands on the girl's shoulder. Patches had appeared above them on the edge of land overlooking the cage and scratched at his bald head. "What the hell..." he muttered.

 

 

 

Lautrec pulled his shotels free from the dead demon's throat. His gauntlets and chest plate were covered and dripping in the thing's blood as he stood panting and gasping to catch his breath. Quelana looked upon him shaking her head as she rubbed Abby's shoulder. "You weren't that furious at the demon. You're rage didn't awaken until you peered into that empty cage where your 'victim' usually resides," she said. He did not look back at her or respond, so she continued. "There are only two things I've ever seen that awaken such emotion in man. So tell me, golden knight, which is it that you kill that poor firekeeper over? Hatred... or love?"

For a long time Lautrec was quiet, and just when Quelana had given up on an answer, he muttered, "Both," and sheathed his blades.

As the pale circle of light that might have once been the sun lowered below the distant horizon and night came upon Lordran, they made their camp their at the firelink shrine. Lautrec had Patches and Benjamin fetch proper kindling for the bonfire from the surrounding lands, and then had Quelana light it before marching her away from the fire to a nearby stone pillar. Her reward for saving his life was to be seated and bound with ropes to it for the night. For her attempt at bewitching Abby, he replaced the gag in her mouth and then she was left to sit, quiet and alone, as the rest of them gathered around the bonfire.

"I'm cut," Patches grumbled, nursing to his bloody shoulder as he slumped beside the bonfire and chucked a twig into the flames. "God damned demon bastard... ugly too, hee-hee."

"I can close the gash with steel and fire," Lautrec told him, "but I have no way to stop any plague that may have crept into the wound."

Patches sighed, seemed to have an internal debate, and then turned to Benjamin, who was looking pale and ill beside him. "There's a hidden sack of wineskins back that way," he pointed, "under a pile of three, white, rocks. Go fetch them, boy."

"I'm sick," Ben protested, and to his credit, he certainly looked it.

"I don't give a piss, I'm bleeding! Get to it ya little shit," Patches shouted, picking up a small rock and chucking it at him.

"I'll get your damn wine," Lautrec said, tossing his gauntlets beside the fire and standing. "Though we're going to have to have a conversation about what other little 'stashes' you may have hidden around." He lifted his eyes to the sky, to the snow. "Assuming its still there. We have changed quite a bit in this wretched world."

Patches brow turned up. "Oh, wouldn't that be unfortunate? Not my lovely little wine stash, let those cursed gods freeze out the rest of the world, but for mercy's sake leave the wine!"

 

 

 

Lautrec disappeared behind the stone arches that lead to the cemetery Quelana had spotted from the crow's perch and returned a moment later, a brown sack at his side. Patches spotted it and a crooked smile twisted up his face. "Ah, so the Gods do still exist! Delightful! Hee-hee."

The bald man's laughter fell awake quickly and was replaced by painful wailing a few moments later as Lautrec doused his gashed shoulder with wine. Patches had to take a belt between his teeth as Benjamin held him when the knight heated his shotel's blade above the bonfire and pressed it to the wound, sealing it. When it was done, and Patches had finished grunting and groaning. The three began passing a wineskin around between them. Abby sat, cradling her knees, staring quietly into the fire and for the most part ignoring them until Ben turned to her and offered the wine.

"Made me feel a bit better," he said.  
"No thank you," Abby said softly and rested her chin on her knees.

"Are you angry with me, girl?" Lautrec asked, taking a seat at the opposite end of the flames. "For killing your poor, sweet, demon."

Abby spoke no response, the subtle creasing of her brow the only hint she'd heard him at all.

Lautrec laughed and took a swig from the wineskin. "The question is," he continued, swiping at his lips. "What has changed in this cursed world that allowed such a thing to happen? Was it the deformed beast itself... or is it you that's special?"

Abby shrugged. "You told me I was special. That I was... Chosen."

"Well the both of you are," Patched interrupted, gesturing at Ben. "But the only thing worthwhile the kid here has done is stick an arrow in your chest back at the asylum! Hee-hee."

Ben looked chagrined. "I didn't mean to," he defended. "And I could do a lot more! It wasn't my fault you left me up there with the stupid crow to watch the action. I could've helped... could've killed that stupid demon thing myself."

"Why are you all so determined to kill everything?" Abby protested, her voice finally raising from a quiet whisper. "We could have saved him!"

"Saved it from what?" Lautrec asked with a grin. "It was a demon. They exist only to cause pain and destruction. It deserved death and death is what I gave it."

"What do you exist for?" Abby snapped back. "All I've seen you do is cause death and destruction."

 

 

 

Lautrec looked to Patches and the two shared a laugh. "She's feisty now that she's a demon charmer, ey?" Patches said and took a swig of wine.

"I'm cold," Ben piped up, wrapping his arms around his leather jerkin.

Lautrec sighed. "What cruel jest of the Gods was it to give me two Chosen, one that wants to hug our enemies into submission, and the other who does nothing but complain and miss shots he should have made."

Ben mouth fell indignantly agape. "Hey, I hit with a lot of those arrows."

"And missed with just as many," Patches added.

"You've got some natural ability, but you lack the discipline of a more seasoned archer," Lautrec told the boy. "Your back hunches and your elbow dips when you pull the bow taught. You have to fix that."

"Well... show me," Ben said.

Lautrec drank from the wineskin and Quelana could see the liquid within was setting to work on all three of them. The knight shrugged, stood, and led the boy over to the edge of the camp. Patches fought to his feet and wobbled after them, laughing at some poor joke about 'arrows in your arse'. When she was alone, Abby stood, wrapped her cleric's cloak closer to her body and crossed the clearing, moving towards Quelana. She trudged through the snow, up the short set of stone stairs, and stopped before her. Abby folded her arms across her chest and stared down at her. Quelana could do nothing but stare back. Back near the bonfire, Patches laughed, and Benjamin shouted something.

Abby looked from them back to Quelana. "If I remove the gag from your mouth... will you try to control my mind again?"

Quelana shook her head, and she meant it. The girl had not only saved her life, but it was clear to her now that there was something special about her.

Abby bit her lip, took one last glance over her shoulder, and crouched beside Quelana. She swallowed nervously as she flipped the hood of her dark cloak away from Quelana's face and reached behind her head to loose the gag's knot. It came away from her lips and Quelana licked at them. "Thank you, she said quietly to the girl.

Abby smiled, nodded, and took a seat beside her; facing her and tucking her knees up to her body again. A moment of silence passed between them, and then the girl asked, "How did you do that to me before? How did you... enter my mind like that?"

"It is a very old trick," Quelana said, shifting the most the ropes around her body would allow to try and get comfortable. "The better question is: how did you resist it? I've never seen that happened before."

 

 

 

Abby shrugged. "I... don't know," she said, and then upon further thought, "I don't understand it. The knight told me I'm the 'Chosen' undead. Aren't I supposed to be special somehow?"

Quelana nodded. "Yes. It's just... both that knight and myself have lived through many cycles of 'Chosen' heroes. None have been able to do what you did today."

"Then perhaps they were false heroes..." Abby said with a shrug.

"Perhaps they were," Quelana admitted and couldn't help a smile come across her face. She liked the girl. There was something... honest about the way she spoke, as if she had nothing to hide and nothing to lose. For all Quelana knew, maybe she didn't. "You said you came from Vinheim?"

Abby nodded, and when she did snow shook loose from her hair. "Yes. My parents sent me to the great Dragon School for mages and clerics there. I... I wasn't particularly good at either, though." She looked to the sky and smiled wistfully. "I had done so well on all the pretests, but when it came down to the real thing... casting and praying and all that... I was just no good. My parents weren't sad or angry or anything, but... they certainly didn't do much to hide their disappointment."

Quelana nodded. "Yes, many men and women I've come across have found the higher arts extremely difficult to grasp. They have to do with your mind, you know I'm sure. The school had to be good for something?"

Abby bit her lip and smiled before nodding. "Yes. Intellect for spells, faith for miracles."

"Mages minds are attuned to understand knowledge and logic on a deep level," Quelana said. "It is, unfortunately, something that can not be taught. A pupil of mine from long ago, Salaman, explained as much once. They grasp numbers and patterns better than others, and so they can see the knowledge of ancient truths that hide in this world and utilize it in their magics. Clerics... they rely on the Gods for their strength. When you cast a miracle, you really aren't casting anything. You are asking the Gods for a favor. Whether they hear you or not is out of your hands... it all depends on how deep your faith runs." She narrowed her eyes on the girl before her with the pretty blue eyes and the tattered cleric robes. "But I don't take it you're a very pious woman, are you?"

"No... not especially I guess," Abby admitted.

Quelana nodded, pausing to let her next words sink in when she spoke them. "But yet there are other high arts. Other... darker arts."

Abby's mouth had fallen agape. A flake of snow landed on her lip and she swiped it away. "You mean..." she nodded at Quelana's hands. "Like your fire."

 

 

 

"Yes," Quelana told her. "While mages pursue knowledge, and clerics lead a life of servitude, pyromancers lead one of control. You don't ask the flames for favor, you command them to do as you desire."

The girl's eyes had gone wide, and Quelana seized the moment to let a small trickle of flames dance along her hand, from thumb to pinky and back before snuffing it. Abby swallowed and lifted her gaze back to Quelana's eyes. "And anyone can learn pyromancy? They forbid talk of it at school."

"Anyone," Quelana said. "The only trick to it is to remember you command the flames," she spoke softly, and her mind drifted briefly to Salaman, "but you must fear them, too... less they consume you."

Abby's face was alight with interest, curiosity, fear, anticipation. She bit at her lip and stared at Quelana's hands. "So... you'd be willing to take me on as your student?"

"Yes."

Abby swallowed. "That knight said you weren't human. That you're... a witch. That you were born from the fire. Is that really true?"

"Yes."

The girl's brow lifted, clearly not expecting such a blunt answer. "Oh. I... see."

"We both came from dark souls, child," Quelana pressed. "We can't be that different."

"Perhaps not," Abby admitted with a nod of her head, and those pretty blue eyes of hers took on a glint of hope.

"What are you doing over there, girl!?" Patches' voice came across the clearing. "Get away from that fire bit-er, uh, fire witch and bring us another skin of wine."

Abby sighed. "I'm not sure how I feel about the rest of this party... they seem so intent on warring against everything. And now they drink when there could be dangers just beyond any one of these hills."

"War and wine," Quelana said. "Two things that men will always lust for." Her eyes traced the figure of the girl's body sitting before her. "And there is a third thing that they desire. You'd best be on your guard to protect it, for I can not help you in these ropes."

Abby thought for a moment and then recognition came across her face. "Oh," she said, grimacing and wrapping her robes tighter to her body. "I... I will try and talk them into releasing you. If I am to be your student, they cannot treat you this way, right?"

 

 

 

Quelana smiled. "You are... a sweet girl. Let us hope your words are true."

Abby returned the smile. "Alright. I'll talk to the knight first thing on the morrow."

"Approach him gently," Quelana warned. "A man's ego is fragile and he is prone to hurt the things that threaten it."

Abby nodded, and held the gag up, offering a sympathetic smile. "Sorry," she said and leaned forward to retie it around Quelana's head.

"A glove," Quelana spoke before her mouth was silenced. "A pyromancer needs a glove. Make it your priority to find one."

"Yes," Abby agreed and replaced the gag. "A glove and your release will be the first thing I ask for tomorrow. And... thank you."

Quelana nodded, the girl returned the hood of her cloak over her head, and then headed back to the bonfire to bring the group of rowdy men firing arrows into the dirt their wine. There was something about the girl that brought her a sense of hope she hadn't felt in some long time. Perhaps she'd be the one to finally bring peace to Izalith and release her sisters from their cruel fate. Perhaps she'd be the one to end this cycle of failures that had plagued Lordran.

It was with these thoughts of hope that Quelana drifted to sleep.

She dreamed of fire; of a great hero rising from a lake of ash to burn away all the world's monsters - man and demon alike. The hero was short and thin, but determined, and had the prettiest blue eyes.

 

 

 

Chapter 7

The shadow swam through the bed of ash and bones and in its path it left lines of fire and chaos; it was death and it was coming for all. The bones it shattered through formed a beast, and the beast made to stop the shadow, but the shadow's hands came alive with flames, and the bone beast was slain in a swirl of searing destruction. The liquid ashes took on the form of a towering golem, but the shadow's power had only grown. It rose from the lake of death like tendrils of black smoke. The fire that had started in its hands had spread to its arms and then to its body and then there was no shadow at all: there was only fire. The fire God kissed the ash and kissed the bones and kissed the sky itself. They all caught flame and the world was burning. The fire God's face looked upon him and it was her one second, then another person the next, then it was her again, then another.

"Ana!" Lautrec shouted. His eyes opened as he sat from the cold bed of snow beneath him gasping for air. His skin felt hot and sticky beneath his leathers, yet his hands were freezing. He tucked them beneath the pits of his arms and took a moment to orient himself.

Darkness was all around, still gripping the lands of Lordran in blackness. The fire they had lit before he'd fallen asleep was dead, and the vague shadowy figures of his traveling companions were unmoving lumps in a semi-circle around it. Shadows become fire, he thought for one mad second before shaking the foolish idea from his head. "Patches," he whispered across the bonfire; it was the bald man's turn on watch the last he remembered.

When Patches did not reply, Lautrec had another mad thought pop into his head. They're dead. They're all dead and frozen and I'm the last living man in the world. "Patches!" He tried again.

One of the still lumps shifted in the dark and grumbled. "Er... piss off."

"You fell asleep on your watch," Lautrec scolded him. "We all could have had our throats slit in the night."

The lump suddenly rose. "Curse the Gods... I, um, wasn't sleeping. Just... giving my eyes a rest is all." Patches paused and then added, "Bloody dark out here with no bonfire anyway. Doubt any attackers could even find our throats to slit in the first place."

"I bet I could find yours," Lautrec told him.

Patches nervous laughter was his only reply.

"Does this feel... wrong to you?" Lautrec questioned. He focused on the distant horizon of mountaintops, dimly aglow with pale moonlight. "This

 

 

 

night, I mean. It feels unnaturally long. Dawn should have broken by now."

"Perhaps we blinked the sun right out of existence? Hee," Patches laughed.

The joke didn't sit well with Lautrec. The sun already looked dying when they'd arrived in Lordran. The possibility that it was now dead wasn't as far-fetched as he would have liked it to be. The snow had given up falling, but the cold had grown even colder, and it didn't look like dawn was likely to break anytime soon. "We need to relight the fire," Lautrec said.

"On that, friend, we can agree," said Patches.

Lautrec stood, stretching the stiffness out of his back that never seemed to be there in his early twenties, but ten years carrying the weight of his golden armor had put a lot of mileage on it, and so it needed a good stretch after a night of sleep. He groped for his armor beside him, found his boots, and pulled them onto his feet. He grabbed a thick branch from the bonfire and headed off towards Quelana.

She was still sleeping when he came upon her, bound from shoulders to waist to a stone pillar at her back. He crouched beside her and shook her shoulder. "Come awake, witch. I have use of your flames." When she did not respond, he shook her a bit harder. "Wake up," he spoke more loudly. Again, she did not respond so he pulled the hood from her head and-

-gasped. In the dim light of the moon, he saw her pale face had grown even paler, and her eyes were turned back into her head, leaving two wide and white circles in their place. She was violently shaking and her teeth were sunk deep into the gag in her mouth. "Hey!" Lautrec shouted, reached up, and ripped the gag free. Her mouth clamped tightly shut, but he could hear her teeth rattling against each other within.

"What is it?" Patches voice called from the bonfire.

"She's... in a seizure or something," Lautrec said.

"Careful, Lautrec," Patches warned; his voice had grown closer. "She's a witch don't forget. Might be a trick. Could be trying to get you to let your guard down."

"It's not a trick, you fool, bring me something to wrap her in - she's shaking," Lautrec commanded, and the urgency in his voice took even him by surprise. The witch had saved his life, he supposed, and he found himself wanting to repay the debt if possible.

Patches was beside him a few moments later. Lautrec reached out and Patches dropped a thin bundle of cloth in his hand. "This is it? What even is it?"

 

 

 

"It's the robes of a man I killed. Nasty little cleric he was," Patches said. "It's all we got, Lautrec. We weren't exactly prepared for a cursed blizzard to take over Lordran."

"We weren't prepared for any of this. That's the problem," Lautrec admitted. He loosened the knot binding the witch to the pillar and she fell into his arms the second she was freed. He made sure here wrists were still secured before wrapping the cleric robes around her shoulders and body and pulling them tight. Besides that, he didn't know what else to do for her.

"Make sure she don't swallow her tongue," Patches said. "Hell... she is shaking like a damned leaf in the wind."

He sat like that beside her for a while, occasionally sticking his fingers between her lips and parting them to make sure her tongue was where it should be. Lautrec had nearly forgotten what it was like to hold a woman and how good it could feel, though he quickly reminded himself that Quelana was no woman, nor even human, and the shivering thing he held in his arms was a witch birthed from flame who detested him.

Dawn had still refused to break by the time she spoke, "I'm dying."

Her quiet voice caught Lautrec by surprise. He craned his neck forward to glimpse her face. Her eyes had rolled back to their rightful place, but she still shook in his arms, and her face was pale and wrinkled with lines of stress. "You're not dying, witch. You were in... a seizure of some sort," Lautrec told her.

"I've never felt like this," Quelana whispered, her voice shaking as much as her body when she spoke. "All the heat in the world... it is gone. It has fled from my body and only a lifeless layer of death and stone have replaced it. It shakes me."

"You're just cold," Lautrec told her.

"I've gone my entire existence without ever feeling this 'cold' that your kind speaks of," Quelana said. "You're telling me I'm just now experiencing it?"

"I saw a girl talk a demon into laying down before her yesterday," Lautrec said. "I witnessed a beast with two heads. I saw a blizzard overtake an entire world in the blink of an eye, and I've seen two young people die and be reborn together from flames. Things have changed, witch. Perhaps this is one of them."

"I did not feel like this before I fell asleep," Quelana said, still shaking in his arms. "And then I dreamed... or perhaps it was a nightmare."

"Hey, you had a dream too there fire witch?" Patches asked. Lautrec turned to his shadowy figure a few feet away; he'd forgotten the man was

 

 

 

even standing there. "Me too."

Lautrec frowned as a knot of trepidation coiled in his stomach. "...so did I."

"Yeah?" Patches asked. "My mother was in mine. Funny thing is, though: bitch has been dead for about twenty years now. Never once had a dream about her. She was all in flames and she was fighting all these great monsters and creatures. Like she was protecting me maybe? Too little, too late, sweet mother. Hee."

"My dream was about a warrior in flames as well," Quelana said, and Lautrec noted that her shivering immediately steadied a bit. "Except the warrior had the face of the Chosen girl. Of Abby."

"Sharing dreams with a witch?" Patches said. "That can't be good. Unless you dreamed the same cursed thing too, Lautrec."

"No," he lied. Her face was there again in his mind's eye, smiling one moment, crying the next, and finally begging. Begging him for what she deserved. "I dreamed of winning a tournament."

Quelana looked at him for a moment before saying, "A lie. But I do not wish to speak further of these dreams anyway. Dreams speak in riddles, and I'd like to think on mine."

And just like that, her shivering stopped entirely. Her sudden stillness beneath his arms was almost disconcerting.

"It's about time," Patches said, standing. "Dawn's broken."

Lautrec lifted his gaze to the far, Eastern, horizon and sure enough: that dead, blue, oval of light was rising, clawing fingers of sunlight between the mountain top peaks.

"Release me," Quelana said.

"You're welcome," Lautrec replied dryly and unwrapped her from the robes.

"You'll have my thanks when you hold true to your word and return me to Blighttown so that I may find out what's happened to my sisters," Quelana told him.

"In time," Lautrec said, growing impatient with her insistence on returning to that plagued place. "First, I need to find someone. I need to find out what's happened to Lordran since we've left. It seems like we were only gone for a short time, but... time may have been distorted. That night felt queer and overly long. Who knows how much time may have passed while we were clutched in the crow's talons."

"Could've been days," Patches said.

 

 

 

"It could have been years," Lautrec corrected. "Who knows? That's why we need to find someone."

"Or perhaps you'll be found by someone..." Quelana added, and the three shared an uncomfortable silence as morning came upon Lodran. Patches threw up his hands, shook his head, and walked off towards the bonfire. Lautrec was turning to leave as well when the witch's words halted him. "I wish to take the girl on as my pupil."

He lifted his brow and turned to face her. "The girl?"

Quelana's face was set in hard lines. She nodded. "Yes. Abby. I wish to teach her the ways of pyromancy."

"You just told me you wanted to be returned to Blighttown."

"And I do. With the girl." Quelana shifted a bit in her binds and narrowed her eyes upon his face. "Though, I don't expect to be set free so easily. I will accompany you without further protest or attempt to escape until you have reached whatever destination you desire. In return, once we are finished... the girl is mine."

A grin crept up Lautrec's face. "Claiming ownership over our little Chosen cleric girl, are you? You'd turn the poor thing into a pyromancer and I'd have the two of you to worry about setting me ablaze."

"I would strengthen her. Give her guidance and purpose. She would be a powerful ally to the both of us."

"And you are basing this, of course, off yesterday's little trick with the Taurus Demon?" Lautrec questioned.

"That," Quelana admitted, "amongst other things. And of course there is the fact that we both dreamed of her last night."

Laughing, crying, begging; her face, then Abby's, then her's again. "How could you possibly know that?" Lautrec demanded.

It was Quelana's turn to grin. "I didn't until just now." When Lautrec frowned, her grin only widened. "You can keep me in captivity for the rest of your days, knight, but you'd only be weakening your party and further endangering all of our lives. Free me and I will stay with you and take the girl on as my student until you no longer need us. That is my offer to you."

Lautrec weighed the witch's words, scratching at the scruff that was starting to emerge from his chin and jawline. Quelana stared at him with her emerald green eyes flicking from one of his to the other, awaiting his answer. Either she's sincere about taking the girl on and staying with us, Lautrec thought, or she's a very good liar. Either scenario didn't entirely sit well with him. "I know these lands well, witch," he told her,

 

 

 

approaching with his shotel. "Don't make me come hunting after you. I might not be as kind as I've been when I find you." With that, he hooked the last coils of rope that bound her and cut them loose. She sat rubbing at her wrists and staring at him until he sheathed the blade and returned to the bonfire.

"That might be the first mistake you've made, friend," Patches said when he'd made his way back, pointing the dagger he'd been running across his whet stone at Quelana. "We'll be picking fireballs out of our asses soon enough. If it comes to it... I will kill the witch." Lautrec simply fixed him with a cold stare and they had no further discussion on the matter.

Abby and Benjamin awoke shortly after: the boy complaining about stiffness in his neck; the girl bright and enthusiastic and even more so when Quelana joined them at the bonfire and told the girl she was to become her trainer. The girl's big blue eyes grew rheumy as a smile came to her pretty face, but when she came to thank Lautrec, he only put a hand up, shook his head, and told her to get ready to move. Their party packed up what little they had quickly, and then he was pointing them in the direction of the sloping hills to the West, and to the Undead Burg where he hoped to find someone... and not something. Patches took point, Benjamin beside him, and Lautrec made Quelana and Abby follow, taking the rear guard himself while keeping an eye on the witch. As they climbed the broken, worn-down, steps, he took one last look at the shrine, at the empty cage set in the earth, and at the dead bonfire in the middle of it all, unable to shake the uneasy feeling that he'd never seen them again.

They made it to the long and narrow sewer tunnel that would carry them to the Undead Burg without spotting a single hollow. It's as if all the world has gone and disappeared, leaving only the demons left to reign and rule, Lautrec thought as they began the ascent of the final flight of stairs. The demons... and us.

The sewer tunnel was dark, cold, and smelled like death itself. As they moved slowly through its gullet, Lautrec watched his traveling companions different reactions from his rear post. Patches groaned about the smell and made a rather poor joke about rats and plague. Ben trudged on beside him, quiet and sullen, his short bow swinging at his hip. Quelana kept jumping at every shadow, every sound, and Lautrec could see little kisses of fire threatening to leap from her fingertips each time. She's never been away from Blighttown, and she was rightfully cautious; after all he'd seen, Lautrec was glad to have another set of vigilant eyes holding watch on the dangers of Lordran. Abby had awoken with a smile on her face, and it hadn't faded in the slightest as they marched through sludge and grime. She ran her hand along the walls of the tunnel, commenting on the impressive architecture and comparing it to the homes in Vinheim. Quelana spoke something softly beside her and the girl laughed and replied just as quietly. Lautrec frowned, realizing that if

 

 

 

the two were to become teacher and student, their relationship would greatly strengthen. And then you'll be left with a useless boy and a man who would sooner kick you down a hole then pull you out of one, Lautrec thought.

He walked up behind the two of them and took Abby's arm in his hand, pulling her back away from the witch. Quelana stared at him with that guarded, blank, expression of hers, but Lautrec only waited till she moved on again.

"What is it?" Abby asked when travel had resumed.

"It's not wise to let a witch speak to you in such close quarters," Lautrec told her. "Lest you wish to become her slave."

Abby laughed. "Her spell cannot work on me, though."

"Can not? Or has not yet? Don't get cocky, girl," Lautrec warned. "You know nothing of the dangers that may await us... or even the ones that walk beside us."

"I'm not afraid," Abby said, her chin lifting just a bit.

"That's the problem. You weren't afraid at the Undead Asylum, either, and you took an arrow to the chest for it. You'd best learn this world is covered in barbs, and if you aren't wary, it will tear you apart."

Abby turned to look upon him and he noted there seemed to be an intellect behind those doe-like eyes of her's. "If this is true, why should I trust you?"

Lautrec nodded. "Now you're learning, girl," he said as they approached the end of the tunnel. "You shouldn't."

The Undead Burg was just as empty as the Firelink Shrine had been. The broken and decaying buildings of days gone past stood sentinel all around them; haggard towers of crumbled stone and warped wood hunched beside each other shoulder-to-shoulder. On the northern border, the ancient ramparts of the city watched over them, their tops caked with several feet of snow, their look-out posts and murder holes crumbled into ruins. In the pale sky above, the dead sun rained snow upon them and cold winds ravaged the streets.

"It's beautiful," Abby said in a hushed, reverent, voice.

"It's shit is what is it," Patches corrected her, turning to Lautrec. "Where the hell are all the damned hollow?"

"This place was supposed to be swarmed with them, right?" Benjamin said. "My friends and I often traded stories of the great doom that took the Burg we'd learned from our parents and their parents." He leaped atop a

 

 

 

stone barrier guarding the fall to the lower burg and held a hand to his brow. "But there's nothing. Were the stories a lie... or is this world a lie?"

Quelana seemed even more uncomfortable beneath all that sky above her. She took Abby by the elbow and held close to the girl. "We should not be here. This place feels... wrong."

"We're exposed out here," Lautrec said, pointing ahead. "If you all want to sit and speculate, do it with your backs to a wall. Move."

And so they moved. He called out instructions to Patches, and the bald men took them over bridges and under archways, through empty and decayed buildings and passages, up stairs and down slopes, and yet all the while as they probed deeper and deeper into the Burg, Lautrec could not shake the feeling that the witch had the right of it: something about the place was wrong.

It was as they neared the tower that would carry them up to the top of the ramparts that Benjamin said, "We're being watched. Building beside the bridge we crossed earlier. Saw movement twice, once before, once just now."

Both Abby and Patches turned to look and Lautrec felt a flush of anger rise to his skin. "And now they know we're aware of it at least," he scolded before turning to the boy, "Are you sure of it?"

Ben nodded. "You all call me useless, but I have a good eye. It's why my father put a bow in my hand when all I wanted was a quill."

"I'll flank back around," Patches said. "Get the drop on the bastard."

"Pointless. They know we're standing here talking about it now," Lautrec said and, without further risk of penalty, turned back to look himself. The building the boy had called out looked as empty and dead as all the others, but there were plenty of windows lining its wall; plenty of shadowed places to peek from. "I want to talk with him. Or her."

"You assume it's a person... and not another demon," Quelana said.

"Demon's know only aggression. They don't stalk, don't wait, don't plan," Lautrec explained. "Whoever's watching... they have their reasons."

"Then what?" Abby asked. "I'd like to speak with someone as well. Perhaps we go call out to them? They didn't attack us, after all. They might mean no harm," but when Lautrec set his eyes upon her, a look of chagrin came upon her and she sighed. "But I suppose... the world is barbed."

Quelana noticed their silent exchange and frowned. "Is that what he told you? Don't let him rob you of your optimism, Abby. It is a warm thing to have in this very cold world."

 

 

 

Abby smiled. "Thank you."

"Touching," Patches said dryly, "but if it's alright with the lot of you, I'd like to get moving before I get an arrow through my ass."

Lautrec opened his mouth to reply when he spotted the movement himself. It had not come from the far building that Benjamin had pointed out, though, it was from a window of the barracks right beside them. "Get down," he commanded, grabbing at Quelana beside him and pulling her to the stone floor beneath them.

"Unhand me," she snapped, turning to make sure Abby had lowered herself as well.

"They are in that building," Lautrec said, gesturing forward.

Patches led Ben out further behind the city parapets, spreading their target zone wide. Lautrec widened his position to the right as well and Quelana ignited her hands. Abby watched on in quiet amazement. "You're outnumbered!" Lautrec shouted, stealing a glance over the top of the parapet. The barracks were still and silent in reply; snow fall trickling from its sills and roof. "We don't want a fight! I only want to know what's happened to Lordran!"

There was a long gap of silence before a reply came back, muffled behind the stone and wood of their hiding place, "Outnumbered, am I? I think not."

The voice was accented peculiarly, and Lautrec found it familiar. He looks to his traveling companions, but none looked any more sure than he was. He stole another peek out and shouted, "What do you mean by that?"

Another lingering silence, then, "The sun falls. The dogs will come. I am your only solace. You do as I say."

Patches snorted laughter from further down the parapets. "Don't play the fool with us, friend! Dawn broke not one hour ago! We have plenty of day left to escape whatever 'dogs' you speak of coming."

After the now-expected silence, the voice spoke, "Then perhaps you really are some other worldly travelers. The days run short and the nights grow long in Lordran. Look to the sky and see the truth of it."

Lautrec lifted his gaze skywards. Snow fell to his brow, winds raked through his hair, and a chill took his spine. The man was right; the pale sun had already begun its fall towards the western horizon. "...impossible," he muttered.

"You do as I say, travelers, and you live through the night. Or you deny me and the dogs take you, though to call these beasts 'dogs' may be unfair. They are monsters, spawns of the darkness itself, and they seek only to

 

 

 

ravage and destroy. Take your chances with them in the night... or disarm yourselves and throw your weapons to me. Choose quickly. Night comes and with it... death."

Lautrec glanced to his left and saw his traveling companions were all looking towards him. For all their complaints and refusals and anger at his commands, when it was decision-making time, they still looked to him as their leader. His decision was easy: he needed answers and was intent on gathering them and so he stood, unsheathed his shotels, and hurled them up to the raised platform outside the barracks. Patches cursed, but did the same, Ben and Abby afterwards. Quelana had no weapon so she disarmed no weapon, but Lautrec and her shared a look and she quelled the fire in her hands, pulling them back up into her robes. Our secret, he thought, and her nod seemed to agree with him.

"Smart man," the voice said. "Now put your hands on your head and walk back the way you came. Do it quickly if you want to live."

As Lautrec marched, he finally placed the strange voice. It was Domhnall of Zena, the merchant and collector of rare items, and now his life laid in the man's hands.

And in the sky, darkness was coming fast. Coming for all of them.

 

 

 

Chapter 8

The pale blue sun was falling beneath the distant hills to the West when Abby and her traveling companions were led down into the lower Undead Burg; the mysterious voice guiding them urging them to make haste before nightfall, lest they be devoured by 'the horrors'. The peculiarly accented man's voice seemed to call to them from windows and alleyways, from rooftops and parapets, and yet they never spied a glimpse of him; at least, Abby had not. The lower Burg was very much like the upper Burg-haggard, crumbling, empty and forlorn-and so when the voice finally halted them at a big, rounded, wooden door, Abby felt relief wash over her. She didn't like the emptiness of the streets. It reminded her of her cell in the Undead Asylum, and of sadness.

"Now wait there a moment while I come and unlock the door," the voice spoke from some unseen nook or cranny and then went silent.

As their party stood waiting, Quelana stepped beside Abby and took her elbow in her grasp. When Abby turned, she saw a look of fear and concern wrinkling the witch's face beneath the dark hood of her robes as her eyes darted from place to place in the streets, cautious. Abby smiled, finding it humorous that Quelana was such a powerful pyromancer and yet feared so much, and laid a hand on the witch's own. "We're okay," she whispered. Quelana nodded, but the apprehensive look did not fade. Lautrec shifted from foot to foot, resting his hands on his hips one moment, his elbows the next, then finally dropping them to his sides and pacing. The knight was clearly uncomfortable without his hooked blades at his sides. The mystery man had commanded them to disarm themselves back in the upper sect of the Burg, and Lautrec had seemed on edge ever since. Patches appeared mostly disinterested, chewing on a leaf of grass and digging the dirt from beneath his fingernails with the point of his dagger. Ben looked like... well, Ben: sullen and agitated and tired. Abby offered him her smile as well, but Benjamin scoffed at it and turned away.

Something mechanical shifted behind the wooden door and it slowly rocked back on its hinged. "Come," the voice within commanded. Lautrec looked from the door to the rest of them, displeasure apparent on his face, yet sighed and became the first to step forward. Patches hung beside the door and motioned the rest of them to follow, the bald man himself taking up the rear.

The room within was just as cold as the streets. As Abby stepped inside, she saw the floor was laid with the same chipped stone as well, and the dingy wooden walls were warped and splintered all around them. Nothing else awaited in the small square except a long stretch of ceiling that ended with a rusty ladder hanging from the lip of a wooden platform. On the platform, their mysterious guide stood watching with his hands on his hips, his head cocked to the side. At first, Abby thought he might have

 

 

 

been a demon, but upon a moment's further reflection, she saw that it was only a helm that covered his head; bronze-cased with two twisting horns that led spiraling points away from his brow, beneath them a pair of bifocals hung over eyeslits. On his upper body he wore a shoulder mantle of pale pink with blue decoration, and a necklace of varying coins hung from his neck, the copper and tin circles clinking off each other as he breathed. "Aye, siwmae," that strangely-accented voice called down to them. "And a good day to you."

Abby smiled, finding the man's voice pleasantly amicable, and returned the greeting. "A good day to you, kind sir," but Lautrec fixed her with an icy look and she quickly pressed her lips together.

"I am Domhnall of Zena," he told them. "And you... you lot are about the strangest company I've come across in the Burg in... a very long time. Your names?"

"Are none of your concern," Lautrec answered for them. "We've disarmed and let you lead us all the way down here among the wretched ruins of this city, and the only reason is because I seek answers. I intend to get them, and I'd prefer them sooner rather than later, so if we could skip these little pleasantries-"

"Ah, but the pleasantries are all that separate us from the savage monsters that inhabit this world," Domhnall explained. "Our civility is a ladder, much like this one," he said, clapping the rusted ladder at his knees, "and only by climbing it do we distance ourselves from the lesser things that lurk below."

Abby saw the impatience draw the knight's face into hard lines. "Then lower the ladder and let us climb so that we may stand on... equal footing."

"Is that a threat, good sir?" Domhnall questioned. "I only asked for your names."

"And you asked that we disarm," Lautrec pointed out. "And that we follow your, blindly, down here. Now you ask for the last bit of use we have: our information. What comes next? Your men rush in behind us and take daggers to our throats?"

Soft laughter came from within the man's bronze helm. "You are one cautious fellow, my friend. I assure you, I live here alone. It has only been through a similar caution that I've survived for as long as I have. I only wish to know my guests a bit before I invite them into the last place of solace that remains to me in this very cold world of ours."

Lautrec's face only darkened. "If you think there are no other ways to reach you then that ladder, you are mistaken," he warned. "Now answer my questions."

"You know, I don't think I care for your demeanor, friend," Domhnall said,

 

 

 

and for the first time, Abby heard some of the amicability run out of his voice.

She'd heard enough. "I am Abby of Vinheim," she said, stepping forward. Lautrec's hand darted out to grab her arm and silence her, but she twisted away. "This is the knight Lautrec of Carim. This man is Patches. This one, Benjamin. Both he and myself are undead and we were rescued from the Undead Asylum by the rest of our party." She turned to Quelana, her pale face hidden beneath her cloak, and considered lying for only a moment. The man had been too kind, though, and he deserved honesty in return. "And this is Quelana. She is the daughter of the Witch of Izalith and the Mother of Pyromancies. And my teacher," Abby added and Quelana smiled. Abby turned her gaze back up to the man as Lautrec glared at her, fuming. "We are simple travelers, kind sir, and we seek only refuge from the coming night and to exchange conversation. You have been sweet enough to us so far and I apologize for our hostility, but we have faced many dangers on the road behind us, and so we approach every step with apprehension on the road before us. We certainly did not mean to offend."

The entire room drew silent then. Abby was aware of Lautrec's hard stare, but she ignored it, focusing instead on the man above. After a moment, his hands came up, gripped his helm by the horns, and lifted it from his head. The face beneath was round and of fair complexion. A shaggy mop of auburn hair covered his head, a light dusting of freckles on his cheeks, and most importantly: a smile on his face. He pulled the bifocals from his helm and tucked them onto the bridge of his freckled nose. "Well, then," he said, kicking the ladder down to them. "Welcome to my home."

"Thank you, kind sir," Abby said, stepping beside the ladder and turning back to take Quelana's hand.

"You handle yourself with maturity years beyond you, sweet girl," Quelana told her, smiling and rubbing her fingers.

Lautrec muttered, "There will come a day when your trust in others will be your undoing, girl."

"And a day when your mistrust will be yours, I'm sure," Abby retorted.

The two held each other's eyes for a moment, Abby with no intention of looking away, Lautrec seemingly of the same mindset, but then Patches shouldered between them and took up the first rung of the ladder saying, "Hope he's got something to bloody eat up there," and the rest of them soon followed.

Domhnall of Zena's 'home' was a welcome change from the barren wastes that plagued the rest of the Burg. After a long climb, they reached the platform, walked beneath an arched doorway, and entered a finely furnished room on the top floor of the building. The warmth of a burning

 

 

 

hearth was immediately apparent, and Abby watched as Quelana was quick to move beside the flames and fall to her knees before them, clasping her hands reverently and appreciatively. The walls up here were polished oak and varying banners of bright colors hung in regular intervals. The floor was carpeted in an exquisite, maroon, rug that was trimmed with silver and decorated with golden rose petals on its face. Tables and chairs stood lined against the far wall, rows of potted plants and flowers (though both had withered and died) clutched to the bottom of a long, opened, windowsill at the other end. Looking out, Abby could see the snow falling gently a dozen feet down to the upper portion of the Burg they'd first arrived in, their foot tracks already vanished in a fresh white coating. The sky had darkened considerably, and Domhnall's little fiery hearth cast a soft and orange glow upon the walls, the window, and part of the Burg beyond.

"It is a very nice home you have here, sir," Abby told their host, turning and offering a smile.

"Please, girl, call me Domhnall," he said, returning the smile. "And thank you. I've made due with what I have." The man turned to Patches and pointed out to the balcony. "I have some meat hanging outside if you all wish to eat. It will have to be cooked." When Patches asked what kind of meat it was, Domhnall's face darkened only a bit as he said, "Not the good kind, I'm afraid, but I've been eating it for weeks now and I'm still standing, so... it can't be all that bad."

Patches disappeared to the balcony and returned a moment later with a hunk of very dark meat in his hands. He sniffed at it, shrugged, and brought it to the fire.

Lautrec paced around the man's home with his arms folded across his golden chest plate, narrowing his gray eyes on each and everything the man owned. Domhnall took notice, but did not move to stop him, instead laughing and shaking his mop of hair as he took a seat beside the table. "Join me... Abby, was it?"

"Yes," Abby confirmed, seating herself across the table and folding her hands atop it. "Thank you for your hospitality."

Domhnall nodded. "I haven't seen humans in the Burg in... a very long time. You startled me quite a bit when I heard your voices. The last ones through here were bandits looking to pillage whatever remained to this cursed place." He looked to the window and his brow creased above his bifocals. "The dogs took them, though."

"What are these 'dogs'?" Ben asked, moving near Quelana and sliding down to the floor to rest near the fire. "Are they just feral beasts? My brothers and I used to hunt wild dogs outside the woods near my home."

"These creatures are no longer 'dogs', really. I only call them such out of

 

 

 

familiarity and habit, I suppose," Domhnall said. "They are spawns of the darkness itself. They are mutilated and vicious and seek only to ravage and kill." He grimaced. "They don't even eat their victims. It isn't about survival. They only tear them apart and move on..."

Lautrec had finally stopped pacing, seemingly satisfied no trap awaited them, and marched to the table to take a seat between Dom and herself. "Alright, merchant, start talking. What the hell has happened to Lordran. What has become of the sun? How long has the cold and the snows been coming? Why are the days short and the nights queerly long? Where are all the hollows?"

Domhnall raised a brow. "Surely you jest?" Lautrec's unwavering stare was his answer.

Dom turned to Abby. "Is he serious? None of you know the answers to any of those questions?"

Abby shook her head.

"Where have you been for the last few months? Down in the catacombs? The Tomb of the Giants? The Great Hollow?"

"Somewhere... else," Lautrec said. "So this has been happening for months now?"

Domhnall shrugged. "Well, yes. Since the Chosen Undead failed."

Lautrec's mouth fell agape. Quelana, for the first time since they'd arrived, turned her gaze from the fire and set it upon the man. Both Ben and Patches forgot temporarily about the meat they were tending to and stared at one another before turning towards the table. I'm the Chosen, Abby thought, clutching at her suddenly-dry throat. How could I have failed already?

Domhnall, upon witnessing their joint reaction, finally looked to realize that their party really didn't know what had happened in Lordran. He swallowed, ran a hand through his hair, and took a breath. "You... you really don't know?"

"Tell us," Lautrec urged him.

Domhnall looked to each of their faces in turn before staring down upon his own hands. "A hero came to Lordran a few months back. The few men and women scattered about took to calling him the 'Chosen Undead'; a great champion that would restore the fires in the Kiln of the First Flame and bring upon a new age of light, one which allow the world to march onwards-to live-and to flourish beneath the dawn of a period of peace and warmth." A smile had crept up Domhnall's freckled face as he spoke, but now it quickly faded. "But the Chosen failed us... and we failed him."

 

 

 

"How?" Lautrec demanded. "Griggs."  
"The mage?"  
"Aye."

Lautrec frowned. "What does he have to do with anything?"

"The man went mad," Dom told them, a look of disgust coming to his face. "He was there when Logan and the Chosen killed Seath and took the Archives for themselves. He was there beside the Chosen for the rest of his journey. But somewhere along the way the mage lost his mind, as most mages do, I suppose, and began seeing a... different outcome for Lordran." He paused, but when no one interrupted, he nodded and went on. "The man came to understand that the Chosen's true power did not reside in his will to succeed or his strength or his dexterity or even his courage. It resided in his ability to be reborn in the flames every time he failed."

Abby thought back to when she had died at the Asylum. It had been the most odd sensation of her life, like drowning in liquid flame, and it was there and gone in such a brief instant... then she had returned. She didn't understand it, didn't understand any of this really, but she knew the fire was important. Maybe the most important thing in the world. "A Chosen is given the chance to fight on even in absolute failure," she said. "That is our, er, their strength?"

Domhnall nodded. "Whatever sickness took Griggs' mind, it drove him to search for a way to disempower the Chosen. He found his way. If there are no flames to reborn from... then the Chosen can die. Just like you and I."

Lautrec shook his head. "No. There's no way to remove all the bonfire's of this world."

"There is," Domhnall corrected. "You just have to remove all the bonfire's keepers."

Abby watched the strangest look she'd seen yet come across the knight's face. He looked angry one moment, afraid the next. His hands balled to fists. "They're dead then? The Fire Keepers? All of them?"

"All but one now."

Lautrec swallowed, stared at the man. "It's her, isn't it? Anastacia...?"

Domhnall shrugged. "I do not know. I know one Fire Keeper escaped and Logan had a man in a top hat and a mask hunting the keeper down to protect them from Griggs. They passed through her a fortnight ago. The captive was beneath a hood."

 

 

 

Lautrec sat quietly for a long time, his eyes locked ahead on nothing at all, then he spoke. "It's her. Where is she?"

"I'd imagine where the rest of the world has seemed to up and move to," Dom said, nodding towards the open window at his back. "To The Duke's Archives. To Logan."

"Hold on there," Patches interrupted from beside the hearth. He was carefully circling the haunch of meat pierced by his dagger over the flames, cooking it. "Before you take this twisted little tale any further, how are you supposed to snuff all the bonfires out? Some don't even have a Keeper. Seem 'em myself, I did."

"They do," Domhnall told him. "Not seeing them and them not being present are two very different things."

"Where are they?" Abby asked.

Dom looked displeased to explain, but he pressed on. "A Fire Keeper is much like a fire itself. They need only oxygen to sustain their life. Many of the bonfire's around Lordran, in order to ensure their safety, have-well, had-their Keeper's buried alive in the soil beneath them... only a thin tube of piping sticking out somewhere so that they can breath."

Abby face contorted with horror. "That's horrible!" "How cruel..." Quelana whispered across the room.

"Every single bonfire?" Lautrec questioned. "Every cursed one has a Fire Keeper near it?"

Domhnall nodded. "That is what Griggs and Logan learned studying the endless tomes of books and documentation in the Archives. Griggs then used that information to hunt them all down, dig them all up... and end all their lives."

Silence gripped the room as Abby imagined each of her traveling companions was thinking on the sheer horror of what they were learning.

"And so Griggs got his wish," Domhnall explained. "All the fires in the world gone out... the last Keeper too far from their flame to make any difference. When the Chosen ventured down into the Kiln of the First Flame, Gwyn killed him." Dom's shoulders slumped as he shook his head. "And the Chosen never returned."

"Then Gwyn lives?" Lautrec asked.

"Yes. For how much longer, though, one could not say. The days grow short and the nights long and soon enough all the light in the world will have withered away, just as Gwyn's life withers with it."

 

 

 

"We light the flame," Abby said, a sudden surge of hope rising in her chest. The room did not seem to share her enthusiasm. "We just light the flame, right?"

"It's not that simple," Lautrec explained. "Gwyn must die."

"And the Chosen must sacrifice their soul to the flame to kindle it," Domhnall continued. "The Chosen is dead."

"The Chosen lives," Abby said. "For I am her."

Dom lifted his eyes to her, looked to Lautrec-who said nothing-and back. "I don't understand, my lady."

"Tell him, Lautrec," Abby urged. "Tell him what you saw at the Undead Asylum."

"When you mention the Asylum earlier, I said nothing," Dom interrupted. "But, sweet girl, you must be mistaken. You lot could not have come from the Undead Asylum."

"Why not?" Ben piped up.

Domhnall sighed. "Because it sunk into the ocean three months ago."

Abby frowned, looking to Lautrec. The knight again did not speak, only sat staring at his hands, brow creased. Patches had forgotten about his meat in lieu of this new information and had burnt one side black. Quelana had turned back to the fire in the hearth, silent. Seeing no aid in any of them, Abby slumped into her chair and stared down at her feet. "...what's happened to us?"

"What is happening at the Duke's Archives?" Lautrec finally spoke, ignoring her question.

"Logan is what's happening at the Archives," Domhnall said, a hint of disdain in his voice.

"You speak of Big Hat Logan, correct?"

"Oh, you wouldn't want to be caught calling him that now," Dom told him. "Heard he had the last man to utter those words castrated. But, yes, the same Logan. He helped the Chosen destroy Seath the Scaleless when the hero failed time and time again. Then? Then the man started losing himself in the wealth of information contained within the Archive's walls. I was there, you know? Briefly. At some point I think all of Lordran was there. When the cold came, that is. They have resources there, wood, fire, food, water, wine. What good it will do them when the long night falls however, I do not know."

"Why did you leave?" Abby asked.

 

 

 

"Because Logan is mad," Dom answered curtly. "He experiments on the living! He found ways to command golems to his will! He spends the nights reading by candlelight and whispering madness to himself, and the days wandering the Archive's halls aimlessly. They're all following a damned mad man up there! I urged them to follow me when I left, but... the comforts a set of rather large stone walls offer a man are enticing. When I finally set out... none followed."

"Who is there?" Patches wondered.

"Everyone," Domhnall answered. "Except me and all of you, apparently. I used to-" He went abruptly silent, cocking his ear towards the window. Whatever he heard caused the man to stand and spin towards the open balcony. Outside, night had taken Lordran, and the velvety blue darkness was draped across the streets of the Burg. "We must lower our voices," he spoke in a hushed, frightened, way before turning to Patches. "We can keep the fire, but it must be shrunk."

"What's happening?" Lautrec asked, and Abby saw his hand instinctively grope for a shotel that was not there.

"Dogs are coming," Domhnall said, closing the window shutters to a slit. "They can't get up here but it's best not to attract their attention and get them all riled up."

"You're sure they can't get in here?" Lautrec asked. "Positive?"

"Yes, yes," Dom said. "We're safe." He looked to each of their party in turn. "Do you want to see them?"

The balcony outside was dusted with snow, but an awning overhead kept it from growing unruly. Domhnall had Lautrec strip his heavy armor from his body, and then led them all outside onto it. At the doorway, the man dropped to his belly and crawled out to the wooden lip of the balcony's floor. Lautrec followed in the same manner, Patches and then Benjamin after him. Quelana was lingering beside the hearth at the now-dimmed flames hovering as close to them as she could. Abby went to her, took her by the hand, and gently tugged towards the balcony. "Come," she urged. "It's not going anywhere." Quelana looked from it to Abby, swallowed, and nodded.

They dropped to their bellies like the men before them and squirmed forward till all six of them were lined up in a row on the balcony's wooden floor. The boards below creaked and Lautrec asked if it would support their weight. Domhnall shushed him, put a finger to his lips, and pointed off towards the North. "They come," he whispered.

At first, Abby wasn't sure what he was pointing at. The streets of the Burg were very dark, only droplets of moonlight creeping out over the stone and wood structures, but then she spotted something moving down a

 

 

 

flight of stairs. It looked like a liquidy shadow that was more sliding down the steps then walking them. Then, before the thing took full form, she heard the growling.

"I don't like this," Quelana said, and Abby could feel the witch shaking beside her.

"Shhh!" Domhnall pleaded. "Just watch."

More shadows were creeping onto the streets. Some from the towering battlements of the city's walls, some from the lower Burg itself, some seeming to materialize from the stone itself. The growling Abby had heard earlier had grown to a chorus of rumbling which finally broke with a loud, shrill, howl. Another howl followed, and another, and soon enough the whole city was alive with the dreadful song of the shadow beasts.

"I have to return to Izalith," Quelana said. "My sisters... something very bad has fallen over this world."

"Would you shut her up!?" Patches hissed. "They're looking!"

Abby squinted and saw the shadow things were moving their way. One passed beneath a sliver of moonlight, and for a brief, terrifying, instant, Abby saw the beast's head was all mouth. It didn't seem to have eyes or ears or anything else... just lips and teeth; massive, sharp, teeth.

"Abby, come with me," Quelana pleaded. "You and I will escape this madness."

"Quiet!" Ben hissed.

Abby reached an arm around Quelana's shoulder and lowered her hand over the witch's mouth. "Shhhh. I... I will protect you," she whispered, though the words sounded funny when spoken from her to a witch with the power of flame that Quelana possessed. "Alright?"

Quelana's eyes were growing rheumy, but the witch nodded. Abby gave her a smile and squeezed her hand, but kept her other hand over the witch's mouth.

"We're spotted," Lautrec said.

Abby looked back to the streets and gasped when she saw just how many dogs had taken to the Burg. At first glance she thought maybe dozens but as her eyes flicked across the area, she thought the number might be closer to a hundred. Several were limping through the shadows towards the clearing below their balcony, their oddly-shaped heads angled upwards; all growling.

Quelana whimpered into Abby's hand, and Abby rubbed at the witch's arm. "It's okay," she told her.

 

 

 

"I think it would be a good time to head back in," Patches suggested.

"I think you're right," Domhnall agreed.

And with that, they started the odd task of crawling backwards into the house. Ben was first, and he helped Patches, Lautrec, and Domhnall in after him. Abby was still too nervous to release Quelana, so she kept hold of her as they lifted to their knees and crept back inside. It was just as they crossed the wooden border that the howling started below.

"What the hell are those things?" Patches asked when they were all inside and it was safer to make noise. "I ain't never seen dogs look like that. Where are there bloody eyes?"

"I told you they were no dogs," Domhnall said, glancing through the slit in the window shutters. "And now they're all coming this way. It's a good thing they can't get in here, or it would be the end of us." He looked at Quelana. "A bad time to have a nervous breakdown."

Abby let the witch go and Quelana lowered her head. "I... I am not brave. I am a coward. I fled from my home when it went to ruins. Fled from my family."

"You are brave," Abby assured her. "You command fire. Would it really obey if its master was a coward?"

"They aren't leaving," Lautrec interrupted. He was pressed to the corner of the balcony doorway, peering out. "Only gathering. Probably isn't the best idea to talk anymore. Let us rest for the night. Do the demon's always leave by dawn?"

Domhnall nodded. "Yes. At least we can take comfort in that."  
"Good," Lautrec said. "Because on the morrow, I'll have more questions."

"And I shall have more answers," Dom told him. "The story isn't quite done yet."

Domhnall showed them resting quarters in the attic of the household. A short, cracked, ladder led up through a little box, and then the peaked ceilings of the attic greeted them. There were blankets stored in barrels at the far end, and all six of them gathered enough to keep warm in the cold of the night. Abby laid her blanket down beside a little, oval, window that spilled moonlight inside, and Quelana asked to lay beside her. Abby welcomed her, glad for the company, and that was how their party spent the first true night of their adventure; huddled together in the attic of a man with a horned helm and bifocals, listening to the howling of the dogs gathered outside, waiting out the long curtain of darkness ahead.

Abby did not fall asleep for some time, and when she finally did her dreams were dark, empty, and hollow; hollow like her, like Ben, and like

 

 

 

Lordran itself would become... if she did not save it.

 

 

 

Chapter 9

The blizzard had swept upon them suddenly and violently, and when it had come it was relentless in its attack. They were blind beneath its swirling curtains, deaf within its howling cries, and endlessly encumbered by its residual carpeting underfoot. By the time night had fallen, the world was a sheet of icy white hail that took on a haunted glow beneath the moon's pale light. Yet still they trudged onwards; still they obeyed his command. Though the deeper they went, the harder they pressed on, the storm only grew more fierce, its cold hands of frost swelling around them like the belly of a pregnant women; a child of pure ice waiting to burst from within and take them all to whatever hells awaited the frozen and dead.

It was Laurentius who came to him first. Solaire had fallen behind the party in his heavy plate armor, and so the hooded pyromancer had to backtrack through his own entrenched path in the snow to reach him. He looked like an ethereal spirit coming in the night, the snowfall playing tricks with his figure as he marched near. "Solaire, you fool!" He shouted to be heard over the winds. "You'll kill us all if you insist upon this cursed journey! Gods be good, let us turn back!"

"Back is death, friend!" Solaire bellowed his reply. "Forward will be our only solace from this wretched storm!" Ahead, faint and blurry figures stood watching beside the mighty trees of the Darkroot Forest, figures that Solaire knew were just as resistant to go on as the man before him. He returned his gaze to Laurentius and clapped him on the shoulder. "We will live, friend. The sun watches over us even when we can not watch over it. Praise it, friend. Praise it and its warmth will guide you!"

Laurentius glared out from beneath his hooded cloak, his eyes squinted against the wind's wrath, his beard and mustache layered with a sheet of icicles. "Solaire... we aren't asking," the pyromancer told him, igniting the glove he wore over his right hand in a spark of red and orange flame.

Solaire looked from the glove to the figures standing sentinel over Laurentius' shoulder, to the pyromancer himself. "Mutiny then is it?" He asked, letting his gauntlet fall to the hilt of his straight sword.

"It doesn't have to be, knight," Laurentius explained. "We are going back to the Archives. To hell with Logan and his mad mission. We can take you as our hostage. Tell Logan there was mutiny and that we forced you back at the point of our blades. Surely he will understand. No one has to die in this bloody storm here tonight, Solaire! Listen to reason!"

Even in the screaming winds of the blizzard, Solaire could hear the smooth shck of his sword coming free from its sheath. "There will be no such deception. I intend to stay loyal to the mission. If you are deserters, I shall treat you as such."

 

 

 

Laurentius shook his head with a sigh. "You foolish knight..." He raised a fist into the air, and the blurry figures behind him began to flank out to his sides, surrounding Solaire. "It didn't have to be like this."

"Of course it did," Solaire replied, widened his stance and raising his shield to his chest. "All things must be the way they are, or else they would not be at all. Praise the sun." He pointed the tip of his sword forward, bowed, and moved in for attack.

They had set out the previous night, early enough before dawn that the black sky was their traveling companion for the better part of three hours. Solaire had hand-chosen his fellowship from the capable men residing in the Archive's barracks, though now he thought perhaps he had chosen poorly; the lot were as craven as the hollow. He'd taken along the pyromancer Laurentius, the knight of Catarina, Siegmeyer, the knight of thorns, Kirk, and, though it went against his better judgement, the fool who called himself the 'Marvelous' Chester. None of them had seemed particularly thrilled with the notion of trudging through the cold and dark nightmare that Anor Londo had become to reach the firelink shrine and discover what the great crow had brought forth to Lordran in its talons, but none of them had flat out refused him either.

Chester had taken point-the reason Solaire had brought him along in the first place-and the rest followed along bundled heavily in leathers and cloaks and wool undergarments to shield them from the cold. They'd left the archives at night, and it was still dark when they had crawled the narrow passage that dropped them to the inner city of Anor Londo. The going was slow and quiet and cautious. Overhead, encircling the city's Great Cathedral, every one of them was aware that an army of hollow, perhaps in the thousands, had gathered; for what purpose no one knew. The journey through the dark streets of Anor Londo was brief and mostly uneventful, though they had to lie in wait as a squadron of half a dozen hollows who were stalking the alleyways of the city like a gang of decaying bandits passed them by. Chester led them through hidden paths Solaire had never heard of, let alone seen, and by the time the beautiful sun was clawing its way up over the Eastern mountains, they had come across a cracked and haggard chasm in the city's outer wall. Beyond it, a maddeningly steep fall of forest that would carry them down to the Darkroot Basin, and then to their destination beyond it.

It was a they reached the bottom of the long embankment and the sun was already rushing back to hide in the West when the storm started to pick up. By the time they'd reached truly flat ground, the forest thick and tall around them as night set in, the blizzard had turned the air to ice, the wind to a chilled dagger, the ground to a heavy swamp of snow that grasped at their ankles as they marched on.

And now here I stand, Solaire thought as he pressed forward to attack the mutinous pyromancer before him. With a party of craven deserters, and I'm like to die without the Sun on my back. A true pity.

 

 

 

Laurentius stepped back and further ignited his glove as Kirk and Siegmeyer flanked out wider. Solaire knew the pyro was the least armored, and made the man his target as he pushed through the heavy snow underfoot to reach him.

Aahwoooooooooooooooooo.

The horn blaring over the screaming blizzard winds froze all four of them in their tracks. Solaire swallowed his trepidation and stole a glance up the near cliffside to his left. Chester was up there. The man had scouted ahead and told them he was going to find a vantage point to get a look at what awaited them in the forest and beyond. The horn he carried slung around his neck by a little silver necklace was to be used only for warning of attack.

Aahwoooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Laurentius had been staring towards the cliffs as well, but now he turned his wide-eyed gaze back on Solaire. "We are under attack."

Solaire nodded, but did not drop his shield nor his sword. He kept his eyes on the flanking knights who were still widening out around him.

Laurentius quelled the flame encasing his glove before raising the fist in the air and opening his palm. The flank halted. "Battle would only weaken us all for whatever comes forth in these woods to pick us apart. I ask for truce."

"And I grant you none," Solaire said. "You are craven and you are deserters."

"I'll kill him," the knight of thorns voice came quiet and calm from beneath his spiked helm. The man was large and when he moved forward in the snowfall, his dark figure seemed to grow as tall as the trees; pointed thorns spiraled from his shoulder mantle and gauntlets. "You deal with whatever else comes."

"This is foolish!" Siegmeyer pleaded with them. The knight was large in his own way... though certainly not nearly as intimidating. "Solaire, please. Laurentius... this is not necessary. We are traveling companions! Let us face whatever threat comes together!"

"Silence, Siegmeyer," Solaire threatened. "You play the role of a honest knight, but were ready to drive your blade through my gut not a minute earlier. You are as bad as the knight of thorns there. Worse, really. At least the dishonorable fool knows what he is."

"We weren't going to kill you, Solaire," Siegmeyer explained. "That was never our intent. We only wished to save our own lives before this cursed storm-"

 

 

 

Aahwooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

"This is madness! We must regroup and take up defensive position!" Laurentius shouted. "Kill us all if you wish, Knight of the Sun, but you will be killing men who wish you no harm." He turned to the others and nodded. "There is a cave near. We make for it. Quickly."

Siegmeyer nodded and the two of them went wading through the knee- high snow as fast as the storm would allow. The knight of thorns held his ground, barbed straight sword clutched in his black gauntlet, but after a moment even he turned and joined them. Craven, Solaire thought, sheathing his own blade. The lot of them! And yet, he moved to follow them anyway.

Chester came sliding down a steep embankment, tufts of snow kicking up in his trail, and halted beside two thick trees standing guard at the hill's base. The man's top hat and jester's mask were still perfectly in place when he fixed his gaze upon Solaire. "Where are the rest?"

"Did you know of their treason, Chester? Tell it true," Solaire demanded.

"Yes," Chester confirmed casually enough. "Now where are they. There are dogs coming."

"Dogs?"

Chester nodded, pointing South. "From the way of the Undead Burg. Lots of them," then upon a moment's reflection, "At least I think they're dogs." He rose from the ground, shook snowfall from his hat and shoulders, and stared out into the maze of trees. "I see their path. We'd best stick together if we all intend to live through this night."

"You were going to murder me," Solaire snapped. "Kill me in cold blood!"

Chester fixed his eyes on him and, though his mouth was hidden by the mask, Solaire could feel the sly grin beneath fixed upon the man's face. "Only if you were going to insist on being so... knightly. Either way, you'll die without us now. I'd suggest you follow."

"Wait!" Solaire demanded, but Chester had already gone running off in pursuit of the other's trail. Solaire stood, cold and alone, in the snowfall staring after them. He turned his gaze South, towards the Burg, and held it there. Praise the sun, give me strength, he thought. What do I do? Take my chances with those treacherous cravens... or the dogs?

That's when he saw them: sleek, snarling, figures pawing their way down the distant hillside, skin as black as pure ebony, movement as liquid as shadow. They slipped in and out of clusters of trees, their massive heads and gaping jaws lined with fangs snapping at branches and snowfall. Solaire counted maybe a dozen coming down the hill... but when he glanced further to the left, he saw another two dozen seeping up from

 

 

 

under the Burg's wall.

"Sun save us," he muttered, turned on his heel, and gave pursuit after the men who'd tried to kill him.

The 'cave' Laurentius spoke of was really just a large chunk of rock taken out of the side of the cliffs that loomed over the Darkroot Basin. It tunneled into the earth, narrowing down to a fine point as it went, and came to an abrupt end a few dozen feet back. Solaire came upon it, stumbled beneath the tangle of moss and vines that draped its passageway and found the hard, snowless, rock underfoot within a welcome feel beneath his boots.

His eyes had not yet even adjusted to the darker lighting the cave housed, masked from the moonlight outside, before arms fell upon his shoulders and threw him to the ground. His helm smacked off the rocks, twisting around on his head and blinding him. He reached for his blade, but strong hands wrapped his forearms and held him in place as someone else removed the blade for him. "Cravens!" He shouted from within his twisted helm. "Unhand me!"

They did, but not before stripping his shield from his arm as well. Solaire clambered to his feet, fixed his helm, and stood before the four men around him, feeling naked and vulnerable without sword or shield at his side.

"Kill him," Kirk bellowed in his deep, calm, voice.

"No!" Siegmeyer pleaded. "Are you mad!? He's unarmed! He is no harm to any of us!"

Kirk shrugged. "I don't like him."

"You can't kill him," Chester said. The man in the top hat was at the back of the cave, taking a cloth along his crossbow, cleaning and checking every mechanical part on the weapon. "He is Logan's lapdog. We'd never get back inside the Duke's Archives without him. Kill the knight... and our fate is to freeze to death out here."

Laurentius ignited his glove and fixed it upon Solaire's chest. "Tie him up. Don't make me burn you, knight."

"You treacherous fools!" Solaire wailed, raising his fists. "I will fight you to the-"

It was the knight of thorns who stepped forward in the dark. It was him who drove his mailed gauntlet across Solaire's helm hard enough to strip the thing from his head and to loosen two of his teeth beneath the cheek. Solaire fell to the ground, coughing the blood from his mouth, and Kirk took hold of his arms, wrenching and twisting at them until they came together behind his back. "Cravens..." Solaire muttered, but even speaking

 

 

 

hurt his jaw where the man had struck him.

"You call me craven again," Kirk's bassy voice warned over his shoulder. "And I'll take your head off its shoulders and bring it to Logan as a trophy."

They made quick work of binding his wrists and elbows and torso and then tossed him aside to lie on the cave floor, bound and useless. Solaire felt his jaw swelling up and hoped the man in the dark armor hadn't broken it. He wrestled to his back and stared forward to the mouth of the cave, where the howling winds and the falling snow beyond looked like a portal to another world.

"How many mutts are out there?" Kirk asked, crouching low beside the cave entrance and unsheathing his barbed sword.

"They are no mere 'mutts', knight of thorns," Chester corrected him, stepping forward and shouldering his crossbow. "Don't treat them lightly. These things looked like beasts crawled straight from Izalith itself. And there are many. Certainly more than us."

"Can we survive this?" Laurentius questioned, his flaming hand the only beacon of light in the dark cave.

Chester shrugged. "Depends how intent the beasts are on ending us, I suppose."

"I will die to no dog," Kirk said.

"Better men have died to less," Chester told him. "Keep your guard up."

The men were very still then and very quiet. Solaire could only watch from his position on the floor of the cave as the rest of them stood guard before that white and blue portal that was the cave's exit. Twice he thought Chester was going to loose a bolt from his crossbow, but both times the man breathed relief and lowered it. The knight of thorns was as still as stone, and when the rest of them seemed to grow apprehensive, Kirk only sat, peering through the eyeslits of his black and thorned helm as calmly as if he were watching a play. It unsettled Solaire.

Finally, Laurentius quelled his flame and stepped away from the entrance. "They've passed. The Gods are good to us today."

"The Gods send a storm of whose magnitude has never been seen before down upon our heads, and you call them good?" Chester asked and a snicker burst forth from beneath his mask. "I'd hate to see them do us bad."

Kirk stood and sheathed his barbed blade. "Piss on the Gods. Let's eat."

Laurentius got them a little fire going at the back of the cave with his pyromancy, and the four of them sat around the makeshift bonfire,

 

 

 

sticking haunches of rabbit and bird out over the flames on the points of their daggers. Solaire could smell the meat cooking and had to fight urges to ask the men for some; he would not beg such honorless scoundrels for anything. He'd rather starve.

"We don't have to treat Solaire this way," Siegmeyer was the first to even mention him as they ate. "He is our friend and our companion."

"He would have stuck me with his sword for simply wishing to preserve my own life," Laurentius said. "He is a danger to us all. And to himself."

"Should kill him," Kirk muttered between bites of his rabbit, and that ended the discussion on Solaire.

It went on like that for awhile, the four of them sharing stories and complaining about the weather and about the mission and about the weather some more as they ate. As the bonfire died down, and the food had all but disappeared, Solaire rolled to his side and was ready to close his eyes and forget about this terrible night. When his eyelids were closed to slits, though, movement at the front of the cave caught his attention and snapped them back open. "Praise the sun," he muttered, desperately trying to wiggle back away from the entrance.

"What are you blabbering on about?" Laurentius asked, but he had only to follow the path of Solaire's eyes to find the answer. "Gods protect us! Arm yourselves!"

The dogs that they thought had passed them by earlier had returned. The entrance to the cave was choked with them. Solaire could see by the dim light of what was left of their bonfire that these were no dogs, either. Their muzzles were grown abnormally large, practically shrinking away the rest of their heads, and the teeth within were jagged and crooked and sharp and huge. A half dozen stood lined before the cave, but behind them, Solaire could not even make out the forest - there were too many waiting to follow the leaders of the pack in. All of the beasts were snarling and drooling from their enormous mouths; their beady red eyes were darting from person to person, rolling about insanely, hungrily.

"Burn them," Kirk demanded of Laurentius. "Burn the things back to Izalith."

"No!" Solaire commanded from the floor. He craned his neck up to face his captors. "If you go on the offensive, they'll grow aggressive and flood the cave. We'll be swarmed before we take down not ten of them! You have to stay defensive! Pick them off as they come! Free me you fools and I will help!"

The lead dog has breached the inside of the cave, and the monster's snarling was catching on the walls and echoing in a queer, haunting, way. His muzzle shook violently as he prodded forward, snapping at the air

 

 

 

before him menacingly.  
"Burn them!" Kirk demanded, his cool demeanor finally broken.

"The knight has the right of it," Chester said, his crossbow fixed upon the nearest beast. "The fire will only awake their rage."

"My rage has awoken," Kirk spat. "Do as I say, pyromancer, or I'll feed you to the things."

"Back! Back!" Siegmeyer was shouting. The fat man in his rounded, steel, armor was swinging his big greatsword in sweeping arcs in attempt to keep the dogs at bay. "Back you beasts!"

Yet the beasts did not heed to his threats. More and more were funneling in behind the lead dog, cluttering the cave entrance so tightly they stood shoulder to shoulder.

"Siegmeyer, you grow to close!" Solaire warned the big man. "Return to the bonfire!"

"Back!" Siegmeyer continued shouting. "Back!"

Kirk stepped forth from the bonfire. "Here, Knight of Catarina, let me aid your attack." The man in the thorned armor laid his hand on Siegmeyer's shoulder and shoved. The fat knight stumbled forward, caught off balance, and drove his sword to the ground to steady himself. It landed beside a dog with a thud and stuck into the earth. The knight tried pulling it free-

-but then the dogs were on him.

"No!" Solaire wailed.

One beast lurched into the air and took the knight's arm in his muzzle. As Siegmeyer moved to free himself, another clamped down around his ankle, sending the man's head back in a scream of pain. The lead dog leaped into the air, found footholds on the fat knight's thighs, and sunk its dagger-like teeth into the spot where his helmet met his breast plate. Blood and flesh exploded outwards as the dog tore back its head.

"You killed him!" Solaire screamed at the knight of thorns. "You killed him!"

Siegmeyer groaned, raised an arm once more to bat the dogs away, and then collapsed to his knees. The beasts were on him immediately, burying their teeth into any exposed flesh at the kinks of the armor and dragging his bloody body back outside.

"Maybe they only wanted a snack," Kirk said. "Maybe I just saved us. The fat old knight will provide quite the feast."

 

 

 

"Murderer..." Solaire muttered, but then had to squeeze his eyes shut and try to picture the sun; the sounds of the dogs feasting outside the cave were too much to handle.

It wasn't long before they returned, though, and none of their anger... of their hunger had seemed to be satiated. The only difference was now their muzzles were painted in Siegmeyer of Catarina's blood.

"It's over," Solaire said. "You will pay in the next life for you crimes, knight of thorns, and you will still die here in this cave tonight."

Laurentius swallowed and spat a burst of combustion at the dogs from his glove. They didn't seem impressed with the attack. "Gods save us... we can't kill them all."

Chester set two additional bolts beside the one nestled in his crossbow's firing mechanism. "No. But we can kill a lot of them."

"I'm not dying to no dogs," Kirk repeated his earlier protest. He set his eyes on Solaire. "But if things get ugly in here... rest assured I am killing you, knight."

The dogs pressed inwards, choking the cave entrance once again. Fresh blood dripped from the points of their fangs. I'm the closest, Solaire thought. It is me who they will feast upon first. May the sun shine as brightly in the next world as it once had in this one. Praise it. The lead dog set its beady eyes on Solaire and opened its jaw.

Thud - thud - thud.  
"The hell is that?" Kirk snapped. "Something in the forest," Chester said. "What?" Laurentius asked.

Thud - thud - thud, the sound came again, closer, as if some great giant were stalking through Lordran. For one crazed moment, Solaire did think it was a giant, that it was some great physical incarnation of the sun, come to save him for his lifetime of servitude. Then a dog outside yelped, and another howled, and yet another started a howl, but was caught abruptly short with another thud - thud -thud. Solaire thought that whatever it was, it sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place it.

The dogs inside the cave began to turn around, their snarls and growls growing more violent and vicious as they did. They funneled back out into the night. Solaire listened intently as whatever battle raged outside took place. Judging by the number of yelps, it did not sound like the dogs were winning.

Thud - thud -thud. Was the final sound Solaire heard as the warring died

 

 

 

down, and he had put together what it was just as the answer revealed itself at the mouth of the cave.

The crystal golems stood huddled together peering in at their party, the swirling snow dancing around their metallic blue surface, the wind whipping at their hulking shoulders and backs. There were four of them in total, and on the blunt ends of their mighty arms, the blood of the dogs they had slaughtered dripped to the snow below.

"What is this?" Kirk demanded. "What do they want?"

"They're Logan's," Chester said, though his hushed and frightened voice was anything but confident. "...I hope."

Laurentius craned his neck forward and squinted. "What are they carrying?"

Solaire looked and saw that tucked beneath the golem's arms were large wheels, or perhaps cogs, that looked old and rusted. His eyes drifted back to their little heads and looked between them. Is it you in there, Logan, he wondered. Do you see through their eyes? Hear through their ears? Do you control them? Speak to them? What secrets have you uncovered in that infernal dungeon of yours?

And just as quickly as the golems had arrived to save them, they were gone again. Chester quickly rushed to the cave entrance and watched for their path. "They're heading back," he said. "Back towards Anor Londo... back to Logan."

"Well let's go!" Laurentius shouted. "This is a favor of the Gods! A convoy of protection to see us back home!"

Kirk sheathed his barbed sword and stepped beside them. "It's about time something went our way."

"We're not going back," Chester told them, his eyes locked on the golems as they trailed away into the blizzard.

"What?" Laurentius snapped.

"Don't think I'll let you stand in my way you snickering fool," Kirk warned. "I've had enough of this infernal blizzard and I'm going back to where its warm and there is food."

"And we will," Chester assure them. "But not yet. You see, the dogs weren't the only thing I spied up upon those cliffs," he turned back to them and looked between them. "I saw something else. A fire."

"Fire?" Laurentius echoed.  
Chester nodded. "Coming from the Undead Burg. It seems that whatever,

 

 

 

or whomever Logan has sent us on this suicide mission to retrieve... is not but an hours travel from here. Surely, my companions, you'd like to meet whoever it is that has caused us such duress? And, of course, cost dear Siegmeyer his life."

Chester looked to Kirk and Kirk nodded his head. "Yes..." the man in the dark armor pulled his barbed blade free. "Yes, I would like to meet them. Very much."

"Good," Chester said. "Then we camp here tonight, and tomorrow... we head to the Burg. Then we find out if whatever the crow dragged back from the lands beyond... was worth it."

Chester laughed and Kirk joined him. Laurentius joined in shortly after, and then Solaire was the only one left that didn't find any humor in the situation. Bound and helpless on the floor of the cave, he only felt pity... not for himself, but for the poor souls left in the Burg that had no idea what kind of men were coming for them.

And coming for them soon.

 

 

 

Chapter 10

Embers rained from the ball of swirling fire, orange and red lines crisscrossing its core, heat emanating so fiercely from within, the snow three feet below was melting away into a puddle of warm water. Quelana loved the sight of fire. There was nothing more perfect in the world than the beautiful chaos of the flames lashing and whipping at the air. It was a particularly magnificent thing to behold, though, when it was birthed from the will of one of her pupils.

"Good job, Abby," she called across the rooftop. "You take to the fire as naturally as one of my own sisters."

Above the fireball, Abby's pretty blue eyes were aglow in a bath of red. Her lips spread into a smile and she looked to Quelana. "It's so... empowering." She turned the pyromancy glove that Domhnall had supplied her earlier in the morning ever-so-slightly on its side and the flames obeyed, twisting and snapping and following her lead. She raised it high, thrust her arms forward, and corkscrewed them. The ball of flame arched across the roof and barreled into a stack of crates on the other side. They exploded in a dazzlingly display of fire and splintering wood sprayed into the air as if thrown from a fountain. Abby turned her excited gaze on Quelana and her smile widened. "This is amazing!"

Quelana returned the smile, but held a cautious hand up. "It is, Abby, but don't let the flames get the better of you. Remember that. Always fear the flame-"

"-lest it consume you. Yes, I remember," Abby finished. "I will. I promise." She bit her bottom lip and grinned down at her glove. "I want to do it again. Can I?"

"You can do as you please. Just practice control and restraint as well as those flashy tricks. Where did you get the idea to twist your arms like that when throwing the fireball anyway? I've never had a pupil do that before."

Abby shrugged, a fresh coating of snowflakes falling from the locks of her chestnut brown hair. "It felt right."

Quelana measured the girl before her in the tattered cleric robes, nodding. "Many things do for you, don't they, Abby?"

"I suppose they do, yeah," she admitted, shaking more snow free that had grown caked to her boots. "Everything except miracle and spell casting, I guess." She laughed. "But this stuff... and the thing I did with the Taurus Demon? It just feels... natural."

That's because you are the true chosen, Quelana thought. The one who will bring a new age of fire to Lordran, and save Izalith from ruins. She

 

 

 

didn't mean to put anymore pressure on the girl's shoulders, though, so she simply said, "That's good. You can continue practicing that pyromancy spell now if you'd like. I will watch from here. My instructions, for now, are complete."

Abby nodded, thanked her, and almost immediately had another fireball cooking up in the palm of her gloved hand. Quelana watched, but also kept an eye on the streets of the Burg beyond the waist-high barrier encircling the roof. They had been with the merchant, Domhnall, now for two days, though the golden knight Lautrec was swearing up and down he refused to stay one more, so they'd likely be departing before nightfall. Before the dogs.

The dogs, for the most part, had quieted down since the first night, though they still lingered in the streets by day now, stray packs of two and three, and by night they came back in full force, their mutated and engorged heads kept fixed upon Domhnall's little balcony and window. The merchant man had been very kind to them, supplying them with food and drink and shelter, but Quelana could feel his hospitality beginning to wane as his supplies grew shorter in number. It would be for the best if Lautrec did in fact lead them away soon, to where, though, she did not know. The man was quiet most of the time. She'd often catch him staring off into the sky, rubbing at the stubble that grew upon his chin. Patches, though, did enough talking for both of them, constantly joking and laughing and even singing on occasion. Quelana still did not like nor trust the man, though, and kept vigilant of any tricks he might be looking to play. Abby maintained her positive and cheerful demeanor, and Quelana was thankful for it, but the boy's-Benjamin's-health seemed to be failing by the day. His skin looked waxy and yellow, and dark circles had cropped up below his eyes. She worried about him, but, really, there was nothing any of them could do.

The pale oval of 'sun' was creeping towards its apex and Abby was working on her fifth consecutive fireball when Lautrec came to them. Quelana turned and watched the man approach, reading the anger in his posture, the way he marched instead of walked, the way his cold and grey eyes were narrowed beneath his brow. "Abby," she called, standing and stepping between the girl and the knight defensively. "Abby, come here." She stretched back her arm and opened her hand, and soon enough Abby was behind her taking hold of it. "Stay beside me."

"What's wrong?" Abby whispered, but her eyes had grown wide upon seeing Lautrec angrily stomping across the rooftop.

Lautrec had, admittedly, gained some of her trust. After all, he'd had plenty of opportunities to hurt either her or Abby, and had yet to do so. He was a cautious, guarded, man, but he did not seem to share the same lust for cruelty that his bald companion did, and so Quelana gave him the benefit of the doubt as he crossed the roof towards them and did not ignite her pyromancy. Still, she was not yet sure of what the man was

 

 

 

capable of, and so she stayed at the ready.

Lautrec stopped a few feet before them and his frown deepened. "What are you doing? Do you think I've come to kill the girl or something?"

"What do you want?" Quelana asked. "She did nothing."

"No," he admitted, lifting a finger to her, "But you did. I wake up and asked Patches where you two are. He tells me on the roof. I ask what you're doing. He tells the girl's been practicing pyromancy with some infernal glove the merchant gave her... for hours."

Quelana frowned herself. "I don't understand. Why do you care-"  
"You were practicing pyromancy at night!?" He snapped, cutting her off. It was Abby's turn to try and speak. "We thought-"

"On a roof!?" Lautrec shouted. "You were up here waving flames around in the night for the whole cursed land of Lordran to see? Do you know what danger you may have brought upon us in your foolishness, witch? I expect as much from the girl, she's young and naive, but you? You should have known better."

Quelana glared at the knight. "You have no right to speak of Abby like that. She is a kind young woman, and you are a paranoid, stubborn, man. Look around us, knight. There's no one here. No one coming to harm us. You're overreacting."

"I'm keeping us alive," Lautrec growled, "and you only seem intent on making that more and more difficult."

"It was Abby who saved us from the Taurus Demon," Quelana snapped back. "It was her who was wise enough to speak amicably with Domhnall and get us shelter from the dogs that would have torn us apart! What have you done for us?"

Lautrec was seething. "If it wasn't for me, the girl would be rotting in a cell."

"I don't think-"  
"No, you don't, do you?" Lautrec cut her off.

"Please stop!" Abby shouted. "I'm sorry, okay? I... it's my fault we were up here. I'm sorry, Lautrec. Please don't yell anymore."

Quelana spun to face her. "Abby, you don't have to-"

"No, it's okay," she pleaded. "I understand. It was a mistake. I apologize." She shouldered past, carefully avoiding Quelana's grab at her elbow, and stepped before the knight. Lautrec looked to yell at her, but she reached

 

 

 

out and took his right hand between both of hers and squeezed. "I didn't mean to endanger us any further, Lautrec. I am sorry."

Quelana watched as the hard lines of the knight's face softened. Stress lines at his eyes smoothed, his brow lost some of its dig into his nose, his eyes lost some of their intensity, cooled. Quelana looked from Lautrec's face to his hand that Abby still had wrapped in her own. Mother of Izalith, she thought. The girl is using her calming technique on him. She is soothing his anger. Abby... what other secrets do you hold?

Lautrec's anger had subsided, but now he was regarding Abby with a look of both confusion and caution. He pulled his hand away from hers and looked at it for a moment before lifting his gaze back to her. "Don't do that again."

"I just didn't want you to be angry," Abby said quietly, folding her hands at her hips and lowering her head.

Lautrec looked from her to Quelana and back. After a long moment of silence he said, "Your hair should be cut," to both of their surprise.

"My hair?" Abby echoed.

Lautrec nodded. "If you're going to be playing with fire. Unless, of course, you don't mind accidentally catching a head of flames one day." He reached to his hip and pulled a short dagger from a leather sheath. "And it will be one less thing for a man to pull if we come under attack." He tossed the dagger to Quelana.

She caught it by the hilt and Abby turned to stare at it wide-eyed and nervous. Quelana looked over her shoulder at Lautrec and understood that, though his words were true, this was also a kind of punishment for her mistake. When she looked back to Abby, the girl was biting at her lip and running strands of her hair through her fingers. "You don't have to do this."

"No, I should. Lautrec is right," Abby said, nodding. "Take it off." She swallowed, closed her eyes, and lowered to a knee.

Lautrec came clearly into view behind her. His arms were folded, his eyes narrowed. "Go on."

Quelana took a handful of the girl's hair, thinking what a shame it was to take such soft and pretty hair away from her, and slipped the edge of the dagger beneath it. It came off easy enough, the dagger was sharp, and soon enough, tufts of brown hair were falling to the rooftop along with the snow.

When it was done, Abby's hair was shorter than even Ben's. Quelana looked to Lautrec and he gave a nod of approval, moved beside her, and took back his dagger. Abby opened her eyes and looked up a them. "How

 

 

 

do I look?" She asked, a hopeful little smile coming to her face.

"Like you might live longer," Lautrec told her. "Now go downstairs. Domhnall and Patches could use help cooking up the last of the food. Then we depart."

"Depart? But... where?" Abby asked, standing and shaking loose strands of her shorn hair from her robes.

"Somewhere else," Lautrec answered in his cold, brief, way, and nodded to the stairs. Abby sighed and headed off, but when Quelana moved to follow, the knight took her by the arm. "Not you."

Abby stopped and turned to give Quelana a concerned look, but Quelana waved her off. "Go on, Abby. I can handle the knight."

After a moment's hesitation, she turned and disappeared down the ladder leading to Domhnall's attic.

When they were alone, Quelana pulled her arm free from Lautrec's grip and stepped away from him. "What do you want with me?"

Lautrec stared at her for a moment before sighing, turning, and heading to the roof's barrier to peer down into the Burg below. After a silence, he said, "We are leaving after we eat. The merchant thinks we can make it beyond the walls of the Burg before dusk. He says the dogs don't stalk the Undead Parish and the church beyond. I watched yesterday from the parapets over there as night fell, and he appears to be telling the truth. We will head there to make passage for Sen's Fortress. I know of a shortcut there to take us to Anor Londo. From there... the Duke's Archives are a short journey. Domhnall says there is an 'army' of hollow in the city. I don't believe him, but if there is, we shouldn't have to stray close enough to fight them." He lifted his gaze to the sky, to the sun. "I mean to meet with Logan... and to see what answers he can provide about what has happened to our world and what we can do to stop it." He turned his head to her and stared, apparently awaiting some reply.

Quelana frowned and stepped beside him. "Why are you telling me all this? Aren't I your prisoner?"

"Are you?" Lautrec asked with a shrug. "You tell me. I stood no guard over you the last two nights. You could have left. You didn't."

"I thought about it," Quelana admitted, unsure why she felt compelled to be honest with the knight. "But I do not believe Abby and I could make it to Izalith on our own."

"I figured as much," Lautrec said.  
"Still... why are you telling me these things?"

 

 

 

Lautrec sighed. "The girl and Ben are but children. Patches a fool. Domhnall I do not trust. That leaves you to consult with."

"Consult?" Quelana questioned. "You want my opinion?"

"That's what we do," Lautrec said. "Knights, I mean. We are used to talking amongst each other, taking orders, planning out our battle lines. You need to consult with others. I learned a long time ago that a man left only to his own thoughts is a man plunging towards madness." A piece of rock broke from the roof's barrier, and the knight took it in his hand, tossed it up and down twice, and let it fall to the Burg below. "So... tell me what you think."

"Why should I?" Quelana asked. She still wasn't sure what to make of this conversation. The knight had been mostly quiet, and when he did speak it was to give command, or to berate them for an error. She was wary of some trap he was laying.

"We don't have time to play this game," Lautrec said. "I'm being honest with you, witch, pay me the same courtesy."

Quelana studied him with suspicion once more, but the knight only held her gaze, his face calm and patient. She sighed and looked down to the Burg. "I think... you underestimate what Abby is. She is something special. Do you deny it?"

"No."

Quelana lifted her brow. "No? Then why do you treat her like a child?"

"Because she is. She very well might be the key to salvaging what's left of this broken world, but she'll never get there without a few harsh lessons. Taking her hair was letting her off easy. I only hope the next time she reaches for a handful of it and finds nothing, her thoughts turn to the error you two made last night."

He speaks with such confidence about everything, Quelana thought. But is it true confidence or a well played act? She watched his hands picking at the stone roof barrier. "I also have a thought about Benjamin."

"Go on."

"This morning after I had taught Abby the fireball sorcery, I went back downstairs to fetch her some water. Ben was kneeling on Domhnall's floor. His nose was bleeding, and when I asked him if he was alright, he looked at me as if I were speaking a different language. He crawled back into bed and curled into a ball."

"He's sick," Lautrec said.

"I don't think so," Quelana said. "He had another bout of 'weakness' back at the Firelink Shrine. It came after Abby used her ability to calm the Taurus

 

 

 

Demon."  
Lautrec turned to her, understanding come across his face.

"And I'd imagine that just now when she used that ability on you, the boy had another bout of weakness."

"They're linked?" Lautrec said, rubbing the stubble on his chin. "Yes... that makes sense."

"They came out of the Asylum together. They look similar. They even share the same age. I believe that the stronger one of them gets... the weaker the other becomes."

"She's killing him," Lautrec said. "Your pyro girl is killing the boy."

"Perhaps. Though, what can anyone do about that? If she can stop this cold... reverse this terrible ailment that has befallen the world..."

"Then what is the life of one, sick, boy?" Lautrec finished for her. The corner of his mouth almost curled into a grin, but he stopped himself. "You sound like me now. What was it you called me yesterday? A cold- hearted fool?"

Quelana ignored him. "He might not die. He might just grow more and more ill."

"Yes, I've heard plenty of cases where a man grows so ill he becomes healthy," Lautrec said sardonically.

"He is no man," Quelana pointed out. "He is a Chosen. They are something different than you."

Lautrec was quiet for a while then, watching the clouds move listlessly through the sky. Finally, he said, "We leave him then. Here with the merchant. We ride ourselves of a sick traveler, and the merchant gets a companion to help him hunt and cook."

"Abandon him?" Quelana said. Like you abandoned your sisters, her thoughts quickly reminded her.

"Not exactly. If he's going to be sick all the time, travel will only make that worse. It's better for everyone if he stays behind. The boy will understand."

"And Abby?"

"What about her? If your asking if we should inform her of this... situation they are in together, I think the clear answer is: absolutely not. She's got too kind of a heart. She'll stop growing stronger intentionally."

Quelana thought on it, and found she had nothing to add. She turned the

 

 

 

subject instead. "What will we do at this 'Duke's Archives' you speak of?"

"Dig for more answers."

"And your promise to see me back to Blighttown..." she said quietly, trying not to appear too eager; she didn't want him to know he had such power over her.

Lautrec sighed. "You and that wretched swamp... yes, witch, you'll get back there. Where we are going there are dozens of men, or so Domhnall says. I will talk someone into taking you. Me, myself?" He shook his head. "I'm never going back there. I have two things to accomplish, and neither will lead me to that stinking pit."

Quelana brushed snow from the roof's ledge. "I would hope one of them is to reverse this terrible cold that you just may be responsible for creating."

"It is. Not to save the world... but to have one worth living in when this is all said and done."

Quelana thought for a moment, staring at Lautrec's face. "And the second thing... you're going to kill Anastacia of Astora."

Lautrec looked to his hands resting on the barrier. They balled into fists. "Astora... keh. Yes, witch, I'm going to kill her."

Quelana turned on him so fiercely, snow that had gathered on her cloak flung off and smacked his golden chestplate. "She is the last firekeeper in Lordran if Domhnall spoke true two nights ago! You would kill the last chance Abby or Benjamin have to be reborn from the flames!? Surely not even you can be so bullheaded and-and... selfish!?"

"Killing Ana is the least selfish thing I may ever do," Lautrec said calmly.

Quelana stared at him. "As long as we're being so honest with each other here this morning, you should know... if we make it to her together, I'm going to try and stop you."

Lautrec turned to her, held her angry look for a moment, and grinned. "Fair enough, witch. Fair enough."

Their conversation didn't last much longer after that. Quelana was too angry, and Lautrec seemed eager to move. He went over the plan of his journey with her once more as she quietly listened and nodded. She knew nothing of the lands of Lordran, save for what her previous pupils had told her, and so had nothing to input. Before he departed, he informed her he'd made a bargain with Domhnall, his golden gauntlets for bundles of warm clothing for the four of them, and that she was to abandon her robes. When she protested, he cut her off by informing her that in her current state, their party looked like they were traveling around with a witch and that was a bad thing. Quelana could find no counter to his

 

 

 

argument, and so when she joined him downstairs and he tossed her a bundle of clothing, she headed into the private confines of Domhnall's bedroom, stripped her black robes from her body, and pulled on dark breeches and a matching tunic, a heavy overcoat of fur and leather, and a wool scarf that wrapped around her nose and mouth and neck. Finally, she stuck her bare feet into a pair of boots, and frowned at the strange feeling of the ground not beneath her soles. She could not understand why humans would want to rob themselves of such a telling sensation, let alone bury themselves in such heavy, restrictive, clothing.

When she returned to the main dining hall where the rest were gathered in heavy clothing of their own, they all stared at her as if she were some new and rare creature they'd spotted. Abby's thin neck and shaved head poked out of a heavy dark blue coat with white trim around the neck and sleeves, and she smiled upon seeing Quelana. Lautrec and Patches were in dark brown leathers and thick coats of grey and black. Domhnall was sipping at a cup of some steaming hot drink, seated at his table, and Benjamin was in the very back of the room... dressed in the same leathers they'd rescued him from the Asylum in. He was sharpening a dagger, his face dark and brooding as he worked.

"Benjamin..." Quelana said softly, crossing the room to stand beside him.

"I already heard it all from the rest of them," Ben snapped, not taking his eyes from the dagger. "Go on and leave me already. You'll regret it, though. You all will. I'm not some helpless little boy. I could have helped..."

"You are helping," she said. "You're needed here now. Be strong. Don't-"

"Leave me," he cut her off, and after that there was nothing more to be said.

Domhnall saw them back to the ladder they had first climbed to lead them to his home two days earlier. The man was in just as pleasant a mood as he had been that day as well, and he insisted on shaking hands with Lautrec and Patches, and hugging Abby and wishing her luck. When his eyes fell on Quelana, it was clear he felt some apprehension about getting too close to a witch, but after a moment's hesitation he reached out and patted her shoulder. "Aye swimae," he said, grinning and turning to face Lautrec. "Good luck on your travels friends. The boy is in good hands here, I assure you."

"Thank you so much for all your kindness and hospitality, Domhnall of Zena," Abby said, smiled, and stood on her tippy toes to give him a kiss on the cheek. "And, of course, for the pyromancy glove."

Dom laughed. "A sweet girl," he said, then to Lautrec, "Keep her safe, aye?"

 

 

 

Lautrec nodded. "Our paths may cross again someday," he said, taking the first rung of the ladder beneath his boot. "Until then."

"Until then," Domhnall agreed and waved.

The Lower Burg was quiet, cold, and deserted. With the sun still not beginning its descent, Quelana felt good about their chances to make it out of the area before the dogs arrived. Her steps were awkward at first, taking up the tail of the party with Abby at her side. She found these 'boot' things to be heavy and cumbersome to her feet, but the snow underfoot had already made the task so difficult, she barely noticed by the time they'd climbed back to the upper level of the city the extra weight. The coat was worse. With no hood to hide her face from the sky, she felt exposed and lightheaded, and once she nearly fell. Abby was beside her to steady her, though. Quelana composed herself, offered her gratitude, and they walked on.

The upper sect of the Burg was windier, but, thankfully, not much different. As they climbed stairs and lowered themselves from ledges, ducked beneath arched alleyways and followed twisting slopes around crumbled buildings and towers, the sun moved up past its apex and towards its Western descent. Lautrec must have noticed this too, because he began hurrying them on more strictly then before, and when Patches requested a 'piss break', Lautrec's dark look was his only reply. They did not stop.

They came upon a tower that Lautrec referred to as 'Havel's Hole'. Within, they were shielded from the biting winds and the heavy snowfall outside, but Lautrec pressed them to climb the spiraling staircase as quickly as possibly anyway, hopeful to be free of the Burg long before night came. Quelana, slowed by the clothing and boots she was still getting used to, was last to climb the stairs behind Abby. The rest had made it up to a flat section a story higher in the tower, Quelana trailing along behind, when she halted and turned her head back to the bottom of the stairs. Voices? She thought, her heart frozen as stiff as the icy streets outside. I must be imagining things. She stood, listening intently, but no other sound came. I've grown as paranoid as Lautrec, she thought with a shake of her head and moved quickly to catch up.

The tower stairs wound and wound upwards for an eternity, and when Quelana believed her legs were going to collapse beneath her, she reached the top where Lautrec and Abby took hold of her arms and pulled her the last bit of the way. Lautrec allowed them a two minute rest (which Patches used to relieve himself in the rounded corner of the room, whistling a melodic little tune as he did) and then he was pushing them to move once again.

They crossed a long, narrow, walkway whose parapets spilled out on one side to the inner city, and on the other side to a great and sprawling forest. Quelana stared down upon it as they walked, amazed at all the

 

 

 

pretty shades of greens and blues buried beneath all the suffocating white of snow.

"It's beautiful," Abby remarked. "What is it?"

"Darkroot Garden," Lautrec explained. "We're not going that way."

"A shame, really," Patches said, shifting the heavy pack on his back and spitting a blade of grass he'd been chewing on from between his teeth. "Hear they have a big, plump, talking cat down that way. Hee hee."

"A talking cat?" Abby echoed, and even with her hair gone-perhaps particularly so-her smile brightened every inch of her face. "I'd love to see that someday."

"'Course, with all these new changes to things... might be a talking dog now, hee," Patches said.

The wind was howling across the parapets, digging icy fingers into their faces and arms, and Quelana twice had to steady herself before she fell. Thankfully, the trip across was brief, and then they were descending a short set of stairs that spilled them out to the mouth of a massive, wide, bridge. Their party walked out to the end of it, and Quelana, once again, was amazed. She had spied the enormous structure from the Burg below- it was hard not too-but up here, actually standing at one end of it was breathtaking. There were no such feats of architecture in Blighttown. Only giant pillars and swamp.

"This will take us to the Parish," Lautrec said, turning to eye the sun above. "And we've made it with time to spare."

"The Gods are good today," Patches added. "They want us to make it. Let's not piss 'em off, ey?"

"On that, we agree," Lautrec said, nodding forward before heading out onto the bridge.

Quelana laid the toe of her boot on the bridge and swallowed. Something so big and so open drove terror into her chest. Abby looked back and, upon seeing her hesitation, returned to take her arm in her own. "It's okay," she said. "I'll walk beside you."

And so she did. That was how Quelana crossed her first ever bridge; clutched tightly to Abby's arm, desperately keeping her eyes on her own boots, and not the sprawling pale blue sky above. She had focused so intently on her own feet, she nearly walked right into Lautrec, who was halted before them. She lifted her head and opened her mouth to question his abrupt stop, but the look on his face answered her question. Voices. You weren't paranoid. "We've been followed?" She asked, though it sounded more like a statement.

 

 

 

"Get to that indentation at the halfway point of the bridge," he commanded. "Patches, help them." He narrowed his eyes over Quelana's shoulder at whomever was approaching. "One of them has a crossbow."

"Oh no," Abby whimpered, but the girl took the knight's command well enough. She was practically dragging Quelana forward, the two of them tripping over their own feet in the knee-high snows. Patches grabbed Abby by the arm when they neared a slight alcove in the bridge with a set of stairs leading down to a lower level and yanked her behind it. Quelana tripped to her hands and knees and crawled the last bit of the way. Patches disappeared below almost immediately. "Where are you going?" Abby pleaded, but the bald man, if he'd heard her at all, offered no reply.

Quelana clambered to her feet, grabbed the edge of the indentation, and stuck her head out to see what was happening. Lautrec stood alone in the middle of the bridge, his golden chest plate held before him in both hands like a mighty shield. Beyond him, at the mouth of the bridge they'd entered on not two minutes earlier, four men were huddled together in dark armors and cloaks, one with a black bag pulled over his head, his arms bound. The fire... Quelana realized with a sense of dread stirring up a knot in her stomach. Lautrec was right. We were using fire at night and these men saw it.

...and now we've led them right to us...

 

 

 

Chapter 11

As the men neared, four dark figures moving forward in a straight line between the bridge walls, they began to take form; the swirling drifts of snowfall from the previous night's blizzard whipping around them, obscuring them just enough to give them the appearance of other-worldly creatures coming forth in dusk's last light. Abby clutched tightly to Quelana's arm as she kept her head low and peeked around the stone wall to watch them. One of them, she saw, was a prisoner. He was garnished in heavy plate armor and his arms and wrists were bound with rope; his head and face hidden beneath a black bag. Beside him, trailing slightly behind the others, the crossbow-wielder stalked forward, and Abby could swear his face was painted like a jester's and his expression was twisted up into inhuman contortions. It wasn't until he neared that she realized the face beneath the man's top hat was, in fact, a mask. On the far side of those two, a cloaked man with sharp features and a bearded face came, his hand aglow with a lit pyromancy glove, not unlike the one Abby wore on her own left hand.

In the center of their group, a tall knight in dark armor strode forward, and Abby found her heart quicken with fear upon the mere sight of him. A barbed sword was dragging at his side, cutting through the snow playfully as he walked. Hung from his opposed arm, a small shield with spikes and thorns growing from its trim. His shoulder mantles were sharp with thorns as well, and even between the distance that separated them, Abby could hear his deep voice speaking with the others, laughing with them.

Only Lautrec stood between the men and Quelana and herself, and Abby knew there would be nothing he could do against the four of them-three, if they kept their prisoner bound-if they charged him. "What is he doing?" Abby whispered to Quelana. "He's going to die!"

"There's nothing else to be done, Abby," Quelana told her, the witches eyes locked on the approaching men. "If these men wish us harm, we must fight them."

"We?"

Quelana shook the insulated gloves free from her hands and the pale skin below took on the red glow of pyromancy. She turned on Abby, fixing her with an almost sympathetic expression. "It is a shame we didn't have more time before you had to use your glove. There was much more I would have like to prepare you for before setting the flames on the living."

"Stay where you are," Lautrec shouted back to them. Apparently he was close enough to hear their conversation. "You're unarmored. The crossbowmen can have a bolt through your chest before you take three

 

 

 

steps."

"Then what do you want us to do?" Quelana asked.

"If they rush me, I'll lead them backwards," Lautrec explained. "Then we hope they come close enough for you to set one of those fire spells upon them."

"And if they don't fall for that?"

Lautrec paused, eyeing the oncoming troop. "Then hope they fight poorly," he said, and upon a moment's reflection, "Or that I fight very, very, well."

Patches barreled up the wooden stairs he had disappeared down earlier, out of breath and red in the face. Abby frowned. "Where did you go running to? Lautrec needs your help!"

"There ain't no bloody way out down there," Patches said, spitting, and unsheathing his dagger. "A shame. I wasn't particularly looking forward to dying today."

"We're trapped?" Lautrec called over his shoulder, chest plate still held forth in his hand like a shield to protect himself for the crossbowmen.

"Aye," Patches said. "One path is a dead end, the other buried in so much rubble we'd have their blades up our asses before we even get the first stone moved."

"Is there enough room to maneuver?" Lautrec asked. "Can we get down there, set them an ambush?"

"Possibly," Patches answered. "Though, if they're even half-witted they'd approach slow, realize we've got nowhere to go, and wait us out. Maybe rain some of those crossbow bolts down on us from the stairs to pass the time."

"Hellooo, friends!" A voice shouted further on down the bridge, and Abby poked her head out again to see the group's pyromancer had one hand cupped around his mouth, the other waving above his head. "Fine day for a stroll on the bridge, isn't it?"

Lautrec did not reply, though Abby saw his stance widen, his knees bend ever-so-slighty, and his grip tighten around the gold edges of his chest plate.

Twenty feet away, the men finally halted their march. Their bound prisoner was struggling beside the crossbowmen and Abby could hear muffled shouts coming from beneath the hood. The tall knight in the thorn-laced armor turned on the prisoner, laughed, and drove the blunt end of his sword into the captive's stomach. The prisoner doubled over in

 

 

 

spurts of coughs and collapsed to the bridge, the bag coming free from his head as he did and exposing the man beneath. He was round-faced and badly beaten, his hair blonde like Lautrec's, but a fairer shade and cropped close to his head. His left eye was swollen shut; dry blood caked his upper lip. Abby clutched her hands to her chest and felt a wash of sadness come upon her. They had been beating the man.

"Set your little 'shield' down there, friend, and let us talk like men," the pyromancer continued, ignoring the coughing prisoner at his feet. "We mean you... no harm."

"Lies!" The captive shouted from the stone floor of the bridge, spitting blood from his mouth and lifting his head to stare wide-eyed at Lautrec. "Craven! The lot of them! They murdered their own! They-"

The thorn knight wrenched his leg back and drove the steel tip of his boot across the prisoner's jaw. The prisoner's head snapped back, his eyes closed, he fell silent.

"I wasn't in the mood for games and deceptions anyway," the knight said before turning back on Lautrec. "Let's tell them the truth."

Abby could see the pyromancer was annoyed his 'game' had been given up so quickly. He took a breath, shook his head, but pressed on anyway. "Well... I suppose that first sentence was a lie. My apologies. We do mean you harm, actually. How much, however, is up to you. I am the great pyromancer, Laurentius. My... eh, blunt, friend here is the knight of thorns, Kirk. The man with his crossbow set, I'm sure, between your two eyes is the Marvelous Chester. Our prisoner is... well, of no concern to you. Now, you can either lay your weapons down and-"

"Piss on that," the tall knight, Kirk, grumbled from beneath his black helm. "I want combat. I know this knight. He's Lautrec. Hails from Carim, no?"

Lautrec was silent.

Kirk laughed and went on anyway. "Those Carim knights don't use shields, which explains the way he's using his damned armor as one." The knight laughed again, fixed Lautrec with a stare, and then pulled the helm free from his head. The man within had thick and curly black hair that framed his rather ugly face. His lips were plump and scarred, and his eyes were like black pits sitting beneath the lines of his dense brows. He pursed his lips, leaned, and spit between Lautrec and himself. "Never did kill a knight of Carim. Would love to add a notch to my belt."

The crossbowmen, Chester, leaned his head forward and Abby saw his eyes fix her way beneath his mask. She shivered and pulled herself closer to Quelana, who wrapped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. "The knight rides with girls," Chester said, his voice only slightly muffled beneath the jester's mask. "And... oh, my. Patches? Trusty Patches?

 

 

 

Patches the Hyena? Ha! I've never seen a sadder group assembled."

Abby looked back expecting Patches to retort, or at least say something, but all she found was a man who looked just as afraid as she was. He said nothing.

Kirk's plump lips curled up into what Abby assumed was his version of a smile as his eyes moved from Lautrec to Patches to Quelana and herself. "Here's how things are going to go. I'm going to face you in combat, knight of Carim. I'm going to win. Then I'm going to take the bald head off your friend there and toss it to the streets below so the dogs can feast on his skull tonight. Then? We're going to take your girls... in more ways than one." He laughed a terrible, horrendous, laugh and the pyro and crossbowmen joined him.

"What say you, knight?" Laurentius questioned. "We won't get involved if Kirk here wants a fair shot at you. Will you face him?"

"You can always try running," Chester added. "And see if your legs are quicker than my quiver full of friends."

"I'll fight," Lautrec said, and it had been so long since he talked, Abby jumped a bit upon hearing his voice so close to her.

"Ooooh," Kirk taunted him, grinning and shaking his head. "A man of few words. I like it." He pointed to the others and waved them off. "Either one of you interfere in this, you'll be picking the barbs of my blade out of your ass tonight."

Lautrec took four steps back so that he was parallel to them and spoke quietly, holding the shield a bit higher to hide his mouth. "If I should die, you'll have to charge them with everything you have. They will show you no mercy if I fall."

"Please..." Abby pleaded, but when Lautrec look to her to continue she realized she had no other words to offer. "I just... wish this wasn't happening."

"Wish in one hand, shit in the other, isn't that how the saying goes?" Patches said.

"Witch..." Lautrec said, his eyes falling on Quelana. "If I fall and you should somehow go on... tell Anastacia I tried."

"You tried?" Quelana echoed.

"She'll understand," Lautrec said, turned to his opponent, and lowered his chest plate to fix it back over his body.

"Done strategizing with yer girls?" Kirk taunted, fixing his helm back over his head. Over his shoulders, Chester and Laurentius stepped back to give

 

 

 

them room. "Clear some of this snow up, Laurentius. Give me so mobility," Kirk said, and the pyro sparked his glove and threw a fireball to the bridge between Lautrec and the Knight of Thorns. The snowfall melted away there, exposing more of the stone beneath. Kirk prodded it with the toe of his boot. "It will be slippery... see which man can adapt to his surroundings better, ey?"

Lautrec said nothing. He stepped into the clearing, his hands reached behind him to the small of his back simultaneously, and he ripped free the dual shotels that hung there. The blades made an audible shck sound that echoed off the bridge walls, and then Lautrec held them low and to his sides, the sinking sun setting them ablaze with its final fingers of light clawing up over the Western horizon. Ten feet before him, Kirk, nodded, raised his spiked shield, and pointed his barbed straight sword directly ahead at Lautrec.

Abby had dreamed of such confrontations when she was a girl. It was like a poem out of one of her school books. Two knights meeting on a bridge in single combat. She had always fantasized that they had both been valiant and honorable and handsome in polished steel plating and white cloaks; that their faces were clean and teeth white and hair perfectly neat and rested upon their comely faces. This didn't feel like one of her fantasies. This... this was two men, faces dirty and armor rusted, ready to murder one another in cold blood and all Abby felt was a sense of dread and a queasy feeling stirring in the pit of her stomach. She felt like crying and suddenly realized how right Lautrec had really been about her all along. I am a girl, she thought. Nothing more but a silly, naive, girl and now I'm going to watch a man die, and if the wrong man should die... I will surely follow him soon enough.

She was pulled from her daze with the sound of metal smacking metal. It was a sickening sound that filled every inch of the bridge. She held tighter to Quelana still and forced herself to lean out to look.

Lautrec was in pursuit. He was driving on the Knight of Thorns, pressing him back, his shotels raising and falling in rapid succession. Kirk could only deflect the blows with his shield, step aside others, and backpedal. Lautrec shouted and pushed harder, and Abby saw he was trying to get the other knight's boots in the heavier snow behind him. Kirk, apparently, realized this as well. He blocked a slash, feigned a thrust of his sword, and barreled forward with his spiked shield held before him instead. Lautrec was gut in the chest and heaved backwards, nearly loosing his footing as his arms pinwheeled for balance. The Knight of Thorns pressed the attack, looking to take advantage of the opportunity, and switched the barbed sword to a two-handed grip before lunging forward with the tip of it stretched outwards. Lautrec's left arm swept down, the shotel clutched in his gauntlet catching the sword and throwing it out of the way. Kirk stumbled to the side and Lautrec swiped at him with the opposite shotel. The spiked shield came up just in time to catch the blow and for one brief

 

 

 

moment that seemed like an eternity to Abby, the two knights stared at each other, waiting to counter the other's attack. When neither did, they both feigned and backpedaled, but now they had switched sides and Lautrec's back was to the pyro and the crossbowmen.

"No!" Abby wailed when she saw Laurentius spark his glove and raise his arm.

Quelana stood so suddenly, Abby nearly fell. The witch sparked her own pyromancy and held the hand up high, threatening to douse the Knight of Thorns in a bath of flame. Laurentius looked from Lautrec to her and his mouth fell agape. "How..." Was all he managed before Lautrec and Kirk were going at it once more.

The barbed sword and the shotels clanged off one another as the two knights moved in close. Lautrec's free hand came up with the second shotel to swipe at Kirk's neck, but the Knight of Thorns twisted free, deflected the blow, and brought his spiked shield down across Lautrec's temple. The hit landed, a spurt of blood shot from Lautrec's brow, and he stumbled backwards to the snow.

Abby's breath caught in her chest, her eyes watered, her legs felt made of rubber. Kirk's pursuit was relentless. He darted forward and stuck the blade into Lautrec's stomach. It's over, Abby thought, her sense of dread ready to overtake her entirely. But it wasn't over. Lautrec had narrowly avoided the attack, wrapped his shotel around the knight's ankle, and pulled. Kirk's leg came out from beneath him, and the big, lumbering, knight spilled backwards into the bridge wall. Lautrec scrambled to his feet, rushed up to his opponent, hooked both shotels around the back of Kirk's helm and ripped. The knight lowered his shoulders just in time so that only his helmet came flying off and not his entire head. Helmless, he wailed a war-cry and swiped the barbed sword at Lautrec's face, but Lautrec had anticipated the attack, parried with the shotel in his left hand, catching the sword in the curved angle of the blade, and ripped it free from the Knight of Thorns' hand. With only his spiked shield left to him, the knight shouted, took it in both hands, and tried driving it down into Lautrec's chest. Lautrec ducked the attack, buried his shoulder in Kirk's abdomen, and tackled him to the ground. When they landed, Lautrec was straddled ontop of the knight, his shotels raised and ready to cut the man's jugular.

"Enough!" Laurentius shouted, threatening Lautrec with a ball of fire.

Chester raised his crossbow. "Congratulations. You win. You're still going to die."

Before Lautrec could respond, Kirk took the opportunity to throw his weight to the side, freeing himself from Lautrec's pin, and rolled back to his barbed sword laying near Chester's feet. He stood, his face as red and furious as the pyro's fireball, and glared at Lautrec panting and heaving.

 

 

 

"Again!" He demanded. "Again you coward! Do you hear me!?"

"Are you sure? Your friends won't be able to save your life again next time," Lautrec said as calm and collected as Abby had ever seen him. He lives for this, she realized. Combat comes as naturally to him as Quelana's pyromancy has to me.

Kirk's face twisted up into a scowl. "Witty words, knight. A shame they will be your last."

"What about these?" Lautrec taunted, and Abby saw he was loosening his chest plate once again. "Now that I know the measure of your fighters, I think I can hold you off." He explained and quickly brought the plate forth to shield himself from the crossbowmen's potential attack once again. "You may yet still win, but we're not going to make it so easy for you. Quelana," he called back over his shoulder. "Take Abby down those stairs and get ready to fortify a position. These men are weaker than I had expected."

"Quelana..." Laurentius echoed, his eyes widening, his mouth falling agape once again. "That... that cannot be..."

"He lies," Chester snapped, trying to spot somewhere on Lautrec to fix his crossbow. "He does not travel with the Mother of Pyromancy. He's trying to scare us off so we don't come after them."

"No, Chester," Laurentius spoke quietly, almost reverently. "I saw her before. She birthed a flame from her bare hand! No glove! She is... she is a Daughter of Chaos..."

Chester turned to the pyro, his face unreadable beneath the mask as he stared. He turned back to them and laughed. "Well... our catch just got a whole lot more valuable. Logan might be so pleased with us we could finally rid ourselves of our knightly guest here," he said, kicking at the unconscious man bound at his feet.

"Piss on the lot of them!" Kirk shouted, still red in the face and furious. "I want the knight in combat! I can beat him! I can win!"

Lautrec was taking cautious steps back towards them. "You will certainly try," he told the group. "But you might have a long night ahead of you. If I were you, I'd hope the dogs from the Burg don't venture this high up, or perhaps it won't be such a long night." He glanced back at Quelana again. "Downstairs. Quickly."

Chester laughed. "We will eventually get you, knight. The lot of you. Then we're going to have our fun."

"We'll see," Lautrec said calmly, still backstepping.  
Patches stood beside Abby and she turned to see his eyes were narrowed

 

 

 

on Lautrec. She frowned at him and meant to ask what he was doing, but then she saw the dagger clutched in his hand; his knuckles as white as bone around it. She gasped, the horrific realization of his intention coming over her, and opened her mouth to scream, but the back of his hand swatted her across the cheek and she fell. "No!" She wailed once she'd recovered. "Lautrec!"

But it was too late.

She looked just in time to see Patches rush up behind him and bury the dagger into the side of his body where the chest plate and its backing met and the flesh beneath was exposed. Lautrec's back arched violently, his 'shield' dropped from his hands, and he winced in anguish. Patches grunted, drove Lautrec to the side walling of the bridge, and shoved him up over the top of it. Lautrec folded over at the stomach, and Patches hoisted his shoulder beneath the knights legs and pushed. Lautrec disappeared over the side.

"NO!" Abby screamed, and her vision blurred with tears.

"Good evening, fellas," Patches said, catching his breath, sheathing the dagger, and turning to the confused party of men before him. He smiled a sickening smile and tucked his thumbs into his coat pockets. "Never liked that bloody knight anyway. He tried choking me once. Pisser. Who go the last laugh now? Patches did. Hee hee."

Quelana had been staring forth in a shock of her own, but now her brow furrowed and her teeth barred and she was ready to rush out and burn the bald men.

"Stay where you are, woman," Chester warned, his crossbow now fixed upon her.

"Quelana..." Abby muttered. She couldn't breath, couldn't stand, couldn't think.

Quelana fell beside her and pulled her close. "It's okay, sweet child. Shhhh. It's alright."

"Some on you know me, some of you don't," Patches went on, the threat of Quelana's fire quelled. "For those who don't, my name is Patches, and I do believe I just saved us all a good long night of uncomfortable violence. Heard you mention Logan? I'm guessing you're heading back to the Archive's where the rest of the sensible men of the world have gathered. I'd be grateful if I could join you. And you, um, Laurentius was it? Yes, that is the Mother of Pyromancy. She's quite the fire bitch, though, hee, and you'd be wise not to underestimate her. Me? I'd personally slit the bitch's throat and be done with her. The other girl, though... I've seen her do some fairly miraculous things. She's the Chosen Undead, you see, and I'd be more than willing to split the reward Logan would likely pay for such

 

 

 

a-"

Kirk stepped forth and drove his shield into Patches' stomach. The bald man choked on his words, sputtered, and then dropped to his knees gasping for air.

"You robbed me of a victory," Kirk told him, laying the barbed sword beside Patches' head. "I don't like to be robbed."

"Kirk..." Chester said, stepping forth. "He did save us some trouble by murdering that pesky knight."

"You want to trust the man who stabs his own traveling companions in the back?" Kirk asked.

Chester shrugged. "Break the hand he held the dagger in." He laughed. "Then he can't stab any of us."

Kirk fixed Patches with a cold stare. "Fine. Lay your hand down."

Patches looked between the three men, a look of stunned incredulity frozen on his face. "You... you can't be serious? I just-"

"Lay your hand down," the Knight of Thorns repeated.

Patches fixed each of them with a pleading stare once more, but when he apparently found no sympathy he winced, swallowed, and slowly set his shaking hand down to the stone floor of the bridge. The moment it landed, Kirk took his shield in both hands and smashed it down upon Patches hand and Abby heard the sickening sound of bones being crunched and shattered. The knight did it a second and third time, and by the fourth Patches was screaming and pleading for mercy.

"Won't stab no one in the back now, will you?" Kirk asked with a cruel smile fixed on his ugly face.

"Killed him..." Abby muttered, swiping tears from her eyes. She felt more hollow then she had when she'd actually been hollow. "He saved me from the Asylum... and that man killed him... killed him... dead..."

"Shhhh," Quelana hushed her, the witch's hand stroking her hair. "The world is a strange place," she whispered. "Those that live may die, and those that die may still live yet. Do not be afraid, Abby. He was defending you. You are still more important than anything. Be strong. Do not let these men break you."

The men strode forth, passing casually by Patches who was balled up on the bridge floor, cradling his smashed hand and weeping like a child. The three of them stepped beside the bridge's indented section and loomed over Quelana and herself, their shadows burying them from dusk's pale light. Kirk cocked his head to the side and licked at his disgusting, plump,

 

 

 

lips. "It won't be safe here for long, but... I'd like to have my fun with them now. The woman is damned beautiful to be in the company of an ugly fool like you," he called back to Patches. "And the girl... what a sweet, pretty, little thing. When's the last time you had something that sweet, Chester, even with her hair all chopped up like a boy's?"

"Too long," Chester said.

"Me too. We have some time to spare before night. Let's make it count."

"No," Laurentius said, stepping between them.

Kirk's face darkened. "You'd better have a damned good reason for blocking those pretty girls from my view with your ugly face."

"This is Quelana of Izalith!" He pleaded. "Do you realize what this means? She... the legends say she's never been to the surface! She..." He looked upon her and stared. "Her mother is responsible for all the fire in the world! And she herself birthed the art of pyromancy to teach to humans! You can not defile her! It would be... it would be sacrilege!"

Kirk sneered. "You're not making nearly as convincing an argument as the thing between my legs is."

"Logan will have us all killed," Laurentius said. "He has been studying this world for so long... can you imagine the treasures he'd reward us with if we bring him the mother of pyromancy and a living daughter of the Witch Izalith unsullied and pure as the day she was born? Think of the punishment if we fail him in this task. I assure you, friends, if you want woman, Logan will provide more than any of us could ever dream of if we bring the witch to him!"

Kirk held the man's gaze for a long moment, the displeasure clear on his face, before saying, "Fine. But the girl is mine."

"The girl will not be touched," Quelana snapped immediately. "If any of you lay one hand on her, I'll kill myself, and if I can't, I will tell this 'Logan' of the treacheries you performed and ask, no, beg, him to end your miserable lives. Leave her be, and I will hold my tongue if we should make it back to him. You have my word."

"Piss on your word," Kirk snarled.

"No, she has the right of it," Chester intervened. "Leave the little girl and her witch alone. Laurentius speaks the truth. We will have our reward at the Archives where it's warm," he looked to the darkening sky, "and safe."

"Denied victory in war and in love in the same hour," Kirk said, turning his head to the side and spitting. "Logan's reward better be worth it." And with that he turned and strode off, kicking once again at Patches' quivering figure.

 

 

 

Chester lifted his crossbow. "Do any more travel with you?"

Ben! Domhnall! Abby thought, but bit her lip and lowered her head to hide her desperation. Please don't find them too!

"No," Quelana lied.

Chester stared at her for a long time before sighing. "Fine. Bind them and get them ready to move, Laurentius. Night comes and the dogs with it. I'd like to be back in the woods before that happens."

Chester stepped back and fixed his crossbow on them as Laurentius pulled a bundle of rope from a sack at his waist. When he bent to their eye level, he was staring at Quelana so intently, he seemed to almost forget what he was doing. "I never dreamed of the day when my eyes would lay upon you, mother of pyromancy. It is... an honor beyond words to just simply be in your presence."

Quelana stared back at him, clearly fighting to hide her disdain. "Just keep the girl safe and untouched and you'll have my gratitude."

Lautrec, Abby thought as the man took up her arms to bind. Please live. Please.

Please be alive. 


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 12

He awoke with the taste of blood in his mouth and a throbbing in his jaw. When he tried opening his eyes, the world was a dim and blurry wash of whites and greys. Voices mumbling from the colorless blobs sharpened his focus; the wind scraping at his face and neck returned it to him. Solaire shook his head and took in a deep breath of icy wind that hurt his lungs. He coughed, the acrid taste of dry blood on his lips and tongue furthering his alertness. He made to stand, but ropes wrapping his arms and torso to a tree at his back refused him. Still in their hands, he realized with despair. Praise the sun, I'm still their captive.

They had returned to the Darkroot Garden. Solaire forced his eyes to widen and took in the sight of the little bonfire they had going in a small clearing of woods; endless rows of brown and green trees marched on in every direction around them. The cravens were gathered around it, aglow in its red warmth as they spoke to one another and drank from wineskins. Kirk's helmet was not on his head, and Solaire saw with disgust that the big knight was smiling and laughing as his yellow teeth ripped at a haunch of rabbit and chased it with the wine. Chester's mask was flipped up onto the brim of his tophat, but the man was seated with his back to Solaire, so the knight only saw a fall of dark brown hair. Laurentius was the only one of them quiet, and almost eerily so. He wasn't eating nor drinking; his shadowed eyes peering from beneath his hood across the fire towards Solaire. No, not me, he realized and turned to follow the man's eyeline. Her?

A woman sat bound in a similar fashion to a nearby tree; her skin as pale a snow, her eyes as green as a fresh blade of grass, and her hair dark and straight and hung loose around her sharp features. She is beautiful, Solaire thought. But who is she? He meant to open his mouth and ask her, but his jaw hurt at the slightest movement and he decided to rest it a moment longer. The woman's head was hung low, as if in defeat, and Solaire didn't think she'd have much to say to him anyway. He looked to his other side and spotted two more travelers now in their company. A bald man was leaned up beside a tree, though not bound like himself and the woman, and cradled a bandaged hand in his lap. He wore a look of agony on his face and when his eyes caught Solaire's, he sneered and quickly turned away.

The last of the new company was a young boy who was hunched quietly beside the fire in a heavy brown coat. It wasn't until Solaire tried shifting his weight and a stab of pain flared in his jaw making him grunt that the boy turned to look back at him and revealed that 'he' was actually a 'she'. Her hair was cut short like a boy's, but her eyes were pretty and blue, the lashes long, and her features were fair and soft. Solaire noted the redness and puffy look to those eyes though and realized she must have been doing a great deal of crying. Her hands were bound loosely at her hips,

but if the cravens were holding her prisoner as well, they clearly didn't see her as much of a threat as either the woman bound beside him, or Solaire himself.

"Logan's dog comes awake," he heard Kirk mutter from the bonfire.

Chester turned back to look over his shoulder. In the shadow of the flames, Solaire could see his facial features were sharp, but not much more. "Hey," he called to the girl. "Don't be talking to our friend there, girl. We wouldn't want to have to take your tongue out, now, would we?"

"No," she said, so quietly and sadly and hopelessly that Solaire felt like weeping for the girl. She sniffled and turned back to the fire.

"Got you some company, Solaire," Chester called across the clearing. "Aren't we kind?"

Solaire knew it would hurt to speak back to the man, but he did so anyway, forcing past the pain in his jaw. "You are nothing but dead man now. You just don't know it yet. The Sun will not shine favorably on any of you when your day comes."

Kirk snorted and ripped more meat free from his haunch. "I say we take his tongue. Would make a good desert."

They shared a laugh and returned to their wine and their conversation. Laurentius still stared at the woman beside him, his hands folded at his chin. Solaire looked to her and frowned. "My lady, do you know why that man is staring at you so intently?"

On his other side, a soft chuckle erupted. Solaire turned to see the bald man was looking his way with a slimy grin on his face. "That ain't no lady, knight. That's a fire bitch."

Solaire scowled at the man. "That's no way to talk to a woman."

"Ain't no woman either," the bald man said. "I told you. She's a bloody witch. The pyro over there has a hard-on for her, as I'd imagine most pyromancers would. Bitch created the art."

"A witch?" Solaire repeated and looked back to the woman. Her head was no longer hanging, now it was lifted and her green eyes were blazing with a cold fury as she glowered at the bald man. Solaire nearly recoiled from her intensity; he'd never seen such hatred on a woman's face. "My lady? Is that... true?"

Her eyes landed on his and some of the rage within subsided. "Yes."

This is the party we came upon on the bridge, Solaire realized, chagrined at his own foolishness. Of course it is. Who else would it be? He looked around the clearing once more. The man with the gold armor is missing,

that is why I didn't put it together. "My lady," he spoke to the woman, "Oh, I... I suppose... I shouldn't call you such... a thing. I- I'm not sure-"

"What do you want?" She interrupted.

Solaire took a breath and composed himself. "You traveled with another. I saw him briefly on the bridge before that large craven in the thorn- covered armor struck me unconscious. He is missing now."

She turned her gaze back on the bald man and nodded. "That man killed him."

"I should've killed you, too," the man said, turning his head to the side and spitting. "Fire bitch. You'll get yours soon enough."

"You killed him?" Solaire asked.

"That's right. Name's Patches. Learn it, fear it, respect it, or you'll be next," he said with a grin.

Solaire frowned. "You belong with men like these. You seem to share their foolish sense of entitlement and their lack of moral fiber. If I were free-" A rock launched from Patches' hand and struck him in the temple. Solaire winced as a bolt of pain carried all the way down to his jaw.

"You ain't free, so I'd watch your tongue," Patches snapped.

"Did we tell you you could go throwing rocks, Hyena?" Kirk's voice came balefully across the clearing. "Shall I smash up your other hand?"

"N-No!" Patches pleaded, his tone shifting immediately. His brow creased, his working hand clutched to his bandaged one, he whimpered. "I didn't mean no trouble. Please."

Craven, Solaire thought, fixing the man with a look of disgust. Regardless, his little act worked. Kirk laughed at the sad man and went back to his wine. Somewhere far off in the woods, a twig snapped and a rock clattered against another. Solaire squinted into the darkness that encased the clearing, catching flashes of snowfall shaking loose from treetops as wind gusted by and nothing else. He tried getting a sense of place, and figured them to be far enough from the Burg that they wouldn't-or, at least, hopefully shouldn't-need worry about dogs. The steep climb to Anor Londo was less than half a day's ride West, and if the Sun was kind, they'd make it before some other beast sprung up in this new world and struck them down.

He sat in silence for awhile, listening to the wind and trying his best not to listen to Chester and Kirk share stories about women they'd had. His thoughts eventually turned back to the woman beside him. He turned on her and raised a brow. "Are you truly a witch, my lady? What does that even mean? Surely you cannot be... well, inhuman. What is your name?"

The woman's eye fell on his and held as the wind tossed her raven-black hair into a swirl around her pale face. She was quiet for a moment before saying, "Do you consider yourself a true knight, sir?"

Solaire, despite being bound to a tree and his face swollen in a half-dozen places, lifted his chin and nodded. "I do, my lady. Always."

She measured him with squinted eyes before nodding. "That girl by the fire? Her name is Abby. She is the Chosen Undead, rescued by the fallen knight that traveled with us from the Undead Asylum. She is, possibly, this world's last hope of being restored. If you are as true a knight as you claim, and I've met many in my lifetime who've said something similar and were proven to be dishonest in their claims, you will do anything you can to protect her - both from these terrible men whose company we are forced upon, and that which lies beyond these woods: the demons and beasts that would seek to harm her."

Solaire's mouth had fallen agape. The woman had spoken so bluntly and honestly about her desires, he wasn't sure of what to make of it. Logan had sent him to find out what the crow would bring to Lordran when it returned from its journey, but Solaire always had doubts in the back of his mind that another Chosen could possibly arise. He looked from the woman to the girl; Abby, apparently. She was too far from them to hear the woman's quiet words, and was still hunched beside the bonfire, gazing sadly into its flames. "You... you are telling me that girl is... the Chosen?"

"I'm more sure of it than anything I've ever been sure of," the woman said. "I don't know what these men will do to me. If we should make it back to your base and I am brought forth to this 'Logan' they speak of, I am not sure what he will do with me. Her life may be in your hands, knight. Swear it. Swear it to your Gods that you will protect her."

Solaire looked to the dark sky and took a breath. "If you speak truly... I swear it, my lady. I swear upon the sun. Praise it and let it guide me with its warmth." He turned to her. "But I assure you, my lady, Logan is a good man. He is a bit eccentric, certainly, but he desires to save this world as much as any man I've encountered. He will not harm you. And if the girl is truly the Chosen... praise the sun, do you know what that means? We still have a chance! She can slay Gwyn! Light the bonfire!"

The woman's eyes locked upon his. She was silent for a long moment. Her lips curled into a faint, wistful, smile. "I... I hope you're right," she said, sighed, and added, "And I am no 'lady', sir. I am a witch. My mother was the great witch Izalith who birthed fire to the world of Lordran."

Solaire grinned. "You jest."  
Her unwavering stare told him that she, in fact, did not jest.  
Solaire's grin faded, his brow raised. "You... you're serious? You are a

daughter of chaos?"

She nodded.

He licked at his lips, his throat suddenly grown dry. "What kind of group was yours? A daughter of chaos, the Chosen Undead, a knight, and a man as craven and cruel as him?" He said, nodding to Patches. "What circumstances, if you don't mind me asking, brought you all together?"

And so she told him. The witch told a story that began in Blighttown, with her own kidnapping, that led them to the Undead Asylum to rescue the girl, Abby, before returning to Firelink Shrine. She spoke of the girl's ability to resist her charm spell and to quell the rage of demons. She told of the Knight of Carim, Lautrec, and how she believed he had come to trust her before his murder, and of his ambitions to end a 'cycle of the world' that had been revolving for an eternity. She spoke to him of dogs in the Burg, and how the holed up in an abandoned home til they passed, and how the knight himself never truly trusted Patches and how it had been, ultimately, his undoing. She told of her desires to return to Blighttown, to find her family and what had happened to them. Finally, she repeated her plea to Solaire. "But above all, know that Abby is the most important part of this. She must be kept safe."

Solaire sat, his head slumped against the tree at his back, for a long while, soaking the story in. What will Logan make of this wild tale? he wondered. A new Chosen sprung to life after the old one failed us... a knight who, seemingly, broke through the barrier of time itself to pursue an end of some eternal cycling of the world... a daughter of chaos brought forth to the realm of men for the first time in Lordran's history... it's almost too much to believe.

He looked to the girl cradling her knees beside the fire. She doesn't look like much, but I suppose... neither did he. Solaire could still see the face of the Chosen Undead who had failed to kill Gwyn and-with no firekeeper's bonfire to return from-vanished from the world. He was a boy similar in age to her. And he failed, Solaire thought. Why will she succeed?

The witch-Quelana was her name, she'd mentioned in the story-looked somewhat exhausted from their talk, and so Solaire asked no further questions. Kirk and Chester finished up their food and choked the bonfire to darkness with a heavy blanket. The blackness of night stole over the clearing like a shadowed hand closing around them as the flames died away. Laurentius stood and made a bed of blankets beside Quelana, who did not look thrilled at the prospect of sleeping so close to the pyromancer. Chester, despite Patches pleas, looped a rope a few times around his midsection, binding him to the tree at his back like Solaire and the witch. Kirk pulled Abby to her feet and did the same, and then they were brushing free a clearing in the snow to make their own makeshift beds.

Kirk had been a heavy sleeper at the Archives, and clearly the woods made no difference to him: Solaire heard him snoring in less than a few minutes. Chester, however, was a different story. He knew the man slept light and with one eye practically held open. If Solaire was, somehow, able to work his way free of his binds (which, he believed, he could not without some blade to aide him) Chester would likely be upon him with his crossbow before he even stood.

And so, with little other option, he lowered his head, closed his eyes, and managed to drift off to sleep with the soft, sad, sounds of Abby quietly sobbing across the clearing.

-o-o-o-

He lifted his head sometime later, the dark that had fallen upon their clearing even blacker than when he'd shut his eyes, and heard movement in the night. Chester was sitting straight up, a grey blob in the dark. Solaire stilled his breath and listened. Rustling in every direction. Surrounded, he realized. Whatever has come... it has us surrounded.

Chester's dark figure moved to wake Kirk.  
"We are surrounded," Solaire whispered across the clearing. "Shut up," Chester hissed back.  
"Huh?" Kirk muttered, coming awake himself.

Movement rustled behind him, the sound of snowfall being crunched underfoot following. Another crunch to his left, and a third almost immediately directly in front. Praise the sun, it's everywhere, Solaire thought. He turned to the witch, unsure of what powers she could use to help bound up the way she was and whispered, "My lady, oh, er- Quelana? Are you awake?"

Her figure was pitch black in the night. It stirred only slightly. "Yes," she said quietly and nothing more.

"What is it?" Laurentius whispered, awake himself now, and crawling over to join Chester and Kirk. "Dogs?"

"Doubtful," Chester answered. "Light your glove," Kirk said.

"Are you a fool?" Quelana snapped at the man. "Have you considered that whatever it is doesn't know we're here?"

"Call me a fool again, witch," Kirk hissed angrily. "See what happens." He began to rise and move towards her until Chester pulled him back down.

"Quiet! Listen!"

The snow all around them was being trampled in, and now, finally, Solaire could see figures coming in the dark; figures coming forth from every inch of the forest, as if the forest itself had come to serve them judgement for their sins. Tall ones swayed forth drunkenly, shaking in the dim slivers of moonlight that penetrated the treetops. Shorter ones scrambled near, uncaring of the noise they brought with them. Big, wide, and slow ones stalked forth, their footfalls shaking at the earth with every step.

"Gods save us..." Patches muttered from his right. "What's going on?"

"The forest has come to give you your judgement," Solaire said. "Give all of you your judgement."

"Chester..." Laurentius whispered, the fear apparent in his trembling voice. "By the Gods, what's happening?"

"Burn whatever it is," Kirk demanded. "Shoot it, too, with that damned crossbow. What are you fools waiting for? Start fighting!"

"No," the girl's voice came so loudly and confidently, Solaire jumped a bit in his ropes; he hadn't even realized she was awake. "They mean you no harm. Light your fire."

"Piss on that!" Kirk snapped. "Girl's mad! Start shooting, Chester!"

"You'd only be throwing our lives away if you do," Abby said.

Chester stood, his dark silhouette rising against the moonlight behind him, and aimed the crossbow at the area of the clearing where Abby was bound. "And how could you know such a thing, girl?"

"They spoke to me in my dreams," she said. "And I spoke to them. They won't harm you. They wish only to see us past these woods quickly."

"Why?" Laurentius questioned.  
"You're listening to a silly little girl, pyromancer?" Kirk shouted.

"Because they are like you," Abby went on. "They want to live. To survive. Just like any of us. I see that now. I understand it."

"I'm going to cut that girl's throat if she opens her mouth again!" Kirk yelled and moved towards her-

-but Laurentius sparked his glove, and the clearing came alive with light. The edges and surrounding forest did too.

"Praise the sun..." Solaire whispered, his breath caught in his chest.

They weren't just surrounded, they were absolutely smothered in the creatures of the woods. Trees that had come to life stood choking off every exit, their branches warped and blackened and decaying, their

leaves almost all gone and dead. They shook as the wind blew past, their feet rooted in the thick snow beneath them. Behind them, the Mushroom People of the forest had gathered as well. The children began their queer, bird-like, wailing and hopped from foot to foot as the larger, adult, mushrooms stood, eery and quiet, staring into the clearing. Solaire swallowed and tried looking beyond the front lines of the forest army, but could see nothing but more trees ambling forth, more mushroom people trudging onwards, more children skipping along in the snow playfully. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, and they had all come to gather around their group.

Even Kirk's courage had fled from him. "Gods... what the hell is this...?"

Laurentius' hand was shaking so badly, the light his glove's fire was giving off began dancing off the nearby trees and mushroom people in violent vibrations. Chester reached up and clamped down on his arm to steady him. "W-we're t-t-through," he whispered. "D-dead."

"They only wish to see me safely through the forest," Abby said, and almost on cue, a little mushroom child wobbled forth and knelt beside the tree she was bound to. He brought his head to her ropes and began gnawing at them.

"That thing is freeing her!" Kirk shouted.

"I see that," Chester said. "Unfortunate, but there's nothing I think we can do about this anymore." He lifted his crossbow to Abby. "Except slaughter the girl if these things attack us. You hear that, girl? If we die, you die."

"They are aware, or you'd already be dead," Abby said. The ropes dropped away from her body, and the mushroom child crawled forth to her hands to repeat the process. When the binds locking her hands together came free, she smiled and laid them upon the child's head. "Thank you, friend." She pointed at Quelana. "Her too. And the knight," she added, smiling at Solaire.

"You won't take her from me!" Laurentius demanded, taking a defensive step towards Quelana. "She is... she is mine!"

"I can not stop you from coming with us when we leave these woods," Abby pointed out. "You're free to follow along."

"Abby..." Quelana's voice came in the dark. She stood, her ropes falling from her body as she did, and the mushroom child crawled over to Solaire and began freeing him as well. "These men will kill us the second we are free of the forest. Please. Leave them!"

Abby moved forth and took Quelana's hands in her own. "I can't force them to do as I say. I am not their ruler. I am their savior."

"Savior?" Quelana echoed.

The girl's smile widened, she leaned forward, pressed her lips to the witch's cheek, and kissed. "It is clear to me now. The forest has lifted a fog of uncertainty from my mind, removed the veil of confusion from my heart. They told me my purpose, Quelana, and it's wonderful! I will light the Kiln of the First Flame. I will save this world!"

"She's bloody mad," Patches muttered.

The witch's face didn't seem to share the sentiment. Quelana's eyes had narrowed considerably on Abby's own, her hands clutched dearly to her shoulders. "How do you know, Abby? How can you be so sure?"

"Because they will help me," Abby said, gesturing to the creatures of the forest. "And not just them, Quelana. There is an army awaiting my command in Anor Londo. If I need them, they will guide me to this 'Gwyn' and seem there safe."

"An army?" Laurentius interjected. "By the Gods, is the mad girl speaking of the hollows?"

"This is insanity," Kirk whispered, but he did not move, and his face was locked in an almost dream-like stare of wonder.

Solaire's ropes came free from his body. He clambered slowly and painfully to his feet, grasping the tree behind him for aid. Abby was watching him, that strange little smile upon her lips, as if she knew some great secret that the world had not yet discovered. Solaire swallowed, looked from her to the witch to the men behind her shoulder. When his eyes returned to hers, he raised his chin and pushed out his chest and felt the wonderful surge of purpose that he had missing since the cravens had betrayed him return to his spirits. "My lady," he said and dropped to one knee before her. "If you would accept me, I would serve you until the end of my days and beyond. I am yours to command if you'll have me."

The girl's smile widened, her blue eyes twinkling in the pyromancer's flame. "I shall. Rise, knight. You are a good man, and have nothing to fear. The world will go on, and so will you."

She laid a hand upon his shoulder and Solaire felt a deep, profound, sense of peace come over him. His every anxiety, his every fear, seemed to melt away. Her touch was like that of the Sun's, warm and kind and gentle, and when she bent forward and kissed his brow, Solaire felt as though his entire soul had been cleansed of the wickedness the world had laid upon it. "Praise the Sun," he muttered, the only words he thought he could.

"Praise the Sun," she returned and released him.

"Kill that mad bitch, Chester," Kirk stammered. "Kill her before she brings the whole forest down on us!"

"If I kill her, the whole forest likely will come down on us," Chester

retorted. He narrowed his eyes on Abby and cocked his head to the side. "So what's it going to be, girl? Do we all just... simply walk out of here? Or do we all die here tonight?"

"I am leaving," Abby answered immediately. "I must go to my army. They are awaiting me. Before that, I am willing to stop at these 'Archives' you speak of and meet with your leader there. I will inform him of my intentions." She stopped and looked around the woods. "And I will not be alone."

Solaire turned to see a path was opening up in the forest. Living trees and mushroom people alike were shuffling aside to let something draw near to the clearing. They all waited patiently as whatever it was came closer and closer, until the tree standing sentinel at the very edge stood aside. From between them, a wolf stalked forth, its fur as grey as ash, its snout as black as the night. Abby lowered to one knee and held out her hand, and the wolf trotted forth to lay his muzzle in it.

"That's Sif..." Laurentius said, stunned.

"Impossible," Chester said. "The Great Wolf Sif stands twelve feet tall. That's a pup compared to him."

"No, that's Sif, Chester, I swear it!" Laurentius whispered. "I was there when the Chosen Undead killed the beast. He looked exactly like that except, well, yes, smaller."

"If the beast is dead, how could it be standing before us?" Kirk asked.

"All the dead have risen," Laurentius went on. "They have returned, some mutilated, some deformed, some... small. But they have all been clawing their way back from the grave for one last go. One last stand as the world fades to darkness and the coldness that threatens to overtake it."

Solaire swallowed his trepidation. This is a dream, he realized. These events are impossible. I must wake up. I must wake up. I must wake up. But by the time he was done pleading with himself, the reality of it all sunk in. He rubbed his hands together, felt the cold on them. He breathed in the night air and let it sit in his lungs. He kicked at the snow under his boots and felt the weight of it. It's real, he thought. This is actually happening.

"Quelana, Solaire," Abby said, standing from the wolf at her feet and extending her arms. "Come, take my hands." The witch moved forth immediately, and Solaire followed. "The both of you as well as this wolf are to be my protectors. I saw this in my dream. Will you accept?"

"Yes," Quelana answered. "Y-Yes, my lady," Solaire said.

Abby smiled, nodded, and turned to the men huddled at the opposite end of the clearing. "You three are bad men... but it is not my place to lay forth your judgement. That time will come when that time comes. My friends and I are leaving these woods. The inhabitants of them will slaughter you if you stay, so if you're wise, you'd follow along as quickly as you can."

The three of them stared forth in quiet awe. Kirk opened his mouth, but Chester elbowed his gut and shook his head. "Okay," was all the crossbowmen said.

"If you attempt to harm me or my friends, this wolf will take out your throat. That is not my wish, but his. Do you understand?"

Laurentius licked at his lips and frantically nodded his head. "Yes."

Abby nodded and looked upon Patches. He was the last one still in ropes. "And you... you killed Lautrec. Though he was a quiet man and at times a cold one... he was also my friend and I believe a good man."

Patches was shaking in his ropes. "M-Mercy, girl. P-please. Mercy!"

Abby only stared at him. Solaire saw a cruelty flash across her eyes that he could never had imagined would have come from such a sweet little thing. But it was gone as quick as it came. "If I left you there, the forest creatures would kill you. Painfully."

Patches began sobbing.

"But I will never let myself become as cruel and wicked as you," Abby explained. She looked to one of the mushroom children and nodded and the little creature scrambled forth to untie the bald man.

"Oh, Gods, thank you, sweet girl," Patches began blubbering. "Thank you."

"I don't ever wish to look upon your terrible face again," Abby told him. "When we leave the forest... you are on your own."

"Y-Yes, sweet girl," Patches agreed. "You are merciful and kind."

Abby turned back to face Solaire and the witch beside him. Her little, soft, hand gave his own a squeeze. "My life, until we reach Anor Londo, is in your hands. I could not have asked for better hands to see me forth, though. We must go. The creatures of the forest wish for us to make haste."

"Yes, my lady," Solaire said, bowing. He spied his sword laying over beside Chester's pack and moved to retrieve it. When his fingers wrapped around it, it felt like the piece of him that had been missing returned. Chester's eyes squinted beneath his Jester's mask, but Solaire only smiled in return.

"Quickly now, Solaire," Abby said, sticking her elbow out so that he may step beside her and take it in his own.

"Abby... why do we need to make such haste?" Quelana asked, stepping to the girl's other side and clutching to her arm. "What did you see in your dream?"

The girl's face darkened slightly. "...the end. It is closer than any of us could have thought." And with that, she said no more.

Their party headed off as the sun began rising over the Eastern stand of trees and mountains; Solaire and Quelana at either of Abby's sides, holding dear to her arms; the grey wolf trailing along before them, scouting the way; Kirk, Chester, and Laurentius, shuffling cautiously forward, their weapons at the ready to defend themselves from attack; Patches hobbling forth at the rear, nursing his smashed hand and swiping tears from his eyes.

And of course the forest and its inhabitants, watching them go.

But they're not just watching, Solaire realized as he passed a mushroom creature with his big hand clutched to his chest, his children gathered at his feet, staring. They're praying. They're wishing. They're hoping. Hoping the girl succeeds. Hoping that they live on.

Hoping that the sun rises on a warm day once more. Praise it, Solaire thought. And let their hopes come true.

Chapter 13

The boy watched the rain drops race each other down the window like two mighty steeds birthed from the oceans, slipping and winding and curving down the glass raceway until their lives came to a simultaneous and abrupt end at the window's sill. The boy drummed his fingers off the glass and watched more rain shake free and plummet to the damp grass below. He smiled. It reminded him of throwing stones into the ponds around Carim's Royal Bathhouse with his sister when they were more young, more free, and more prone to getting into trouble. The rain would be falling on the ponds now, and the boy wondered if he'd ever skip stones across them so freely again. He'd be entering training to be a squire soon enough, and if he was good enough, he'd become a knight like his father before him and his father before him. Knights didn't have time for such pleasantries, a man he had admired as a boy in golden armor had told him once before riding off to some great adventure outside Carim's walls. The dreams of riding gallantly through Lordran, horseback, armed, and armored like that man, were almost enough to make the boy forget the silly games he had played with his sister at the ponds. Almost.

"Lautrec," his father's voice came, strong and firm, from over his shoulder.

Lautrec turned, smiled, and bowed. "Father."

His father was a cold man and did not return the smile. Instead, his big wide brow wrinkled into a frown as he spoke. "Are you daydreaming again, son?"

"No, father," Lautrec said.

His father shook his head. "No, Lautrec. You are dreaming. Even after I told you knight's need focus only on the weapon at hand and their opponent before them and leave the dreaming to the artists. You have a soft heart, boy, but we'll fix that. For now, you need only wake up. "

"I don't understand. I was only watching the rain. I was-"

"Look again," his father commanded in that impossible-to-deny way only his father could.

Lautrec frowned, turned, and-

-o-o-o-

-Rose was beside him in bed. Her hair was a mess of sweaty tangles around her brow, and the upper half of her breasts were peeking out from beneath the bedsheets; milky white mounds that hinted at a wealth of treasure below. She bit at her lip and grinned and Lautrec shook his head to focus his mind. "I was dreaming," he told her.

Rose giggled. "It didn't feel like you were dreaming," she whispered, leaned forward, and kissed his bottom lip. "My knight," she went on and kissed at his cheek, his neck, his shoulder.

Her lips were full and warm, and Lautrec nearly grabbed hold of her and kissed back, but there was a stir of trepidation in his chest that he could not shake free. "Rose... something very bad is about to happen to me."

Rose batted her lashes and her hands reached for his waist. "Oh? I don't think it will be so bad as long as the lights are low and I'm here beneath you, my big strong knight." She laughed and went to kiss him again.

He put a hand to her shoulder and pressed her back to the mattress. "You don't understand," he said and scooted off the bed. He walked naked to the oak cabinet at the foot of the bed and threw open the doors to dress himself in breeches and a tunic. It was as the last button was being buttoned that Devon appeared in his bedroom doorway. Lautrec turned on his friend and felt his heart sink and his stomach threaten to overturn. This was the bad thing coming for him.

"Lautrec, come with me," Devon said, his face as milky white as Rose's breasts, his voice as somber as a cold rain falling in the night.

"Father," Lautrec said without so much as thinking why.

Devon narrowed his eyes and his mouth fell partly agape. "Y-yes. How did you-"

"Who else..."

Devon looked to the bed behind Lautrec and swallowed. "I don't think this is a matter for witches to hear."

"Witches? That's Rose, you fool. She's-" Lautrec spoke, but when he turned back to the bed, Rose had disappeared from beneath the sheets, and a pale woman with dark hair and flames for hands had taken her place. "What have you done with her!?" Lautrec snapped, but Devon's hand gripped his arm and was pulling him away. He opened his mouth to shout, but his words were lost in the great and gaping chasms of time distortion. When his thoughts were his own once more, he was outside the squire barracks, and the night was aflame. Fires burned in every inch of Carim, the heat searing and close enough around them to water their eyes. The city square had descended into madness, men and women and children fleeing from their homes, screaming, crying, and screaming some more"Why!?" He managed over the chaos as people screamed and rushed past him and more cried and rushed through him. "Why has this happened!?"

"They knew of the passageway," Devon's voice came from a mile away, though he was standing right beside Lautrec. "They had an insider. Lautrec... they're all dead. Your family. I'm... sorry."

The sky was black on the horizon, the clunky figures of buildings drew jagged lines along it, and now those lines were bleeding red and orange into the night. The wind chilled, the rain turned to snow, and his side screamed in agony. When he looked down upon it, a red blotch was blossoming from his tunic like a flower beside the Royal Bathhouse ponds in spring where he had played as a boy. "Fire..." he muttered, and he felt his cheeks moisten with what might have been rain or might have been snow or might have been tears. "The witch...?"

"It's not the witch you need worry about now, my friend," Devon said, laying his hand on Lautrec's shoulder. Lautrec was horrified to see his childhood friend had grown bronze horns from beneath his mop of brown hair, and when he spoke, his words were strangely accentuated. "It's the dogs, Lautrec. And the cold."

As Devon said the word cold, the wind kicked even harder, and Lautrec felt his leg snap beneath him, his wounded abdomen tore at his insides, his head felt fuzzy, weak, his strength fled from his entire body in an instant, like raindrops racing down a windowsill.

-o-o-o-

"What am I supposed to do?" He asked no one, his eyes flicked open, and he realized the dream was over. And the nightmare begins, Lautrec thought, and lifted his head to survey the surroundings.

He was in the lower Burg, nestled in a thick fall of snow that came up around him like a cocoon wrapping his body. His neck hurt upon lifting it, and his leg, which he was sure was smashed to bits, flared up in such agony, he threw his head back and screamed into the empty streets. His voice carried, echoing and bouncing off the crumbling buildings and decaying walls, and then he was left in a cold, damp, pit of suffocating silence. He forced his eyes to open again and look to the sky. It was dark, not quite black, but dark. He grit his teeth and looked to his side. The snow there was dyed a dark red, and Lautrec cursed when he saw just how much dye had been laid. I'm going to die here, he thought, letting his head fall back to the pillow of snowfall it had been encased in. I'm going to bleed to death here in the streets of the Gods-damned Burg. Patches... I turned my back on you one too many times and you finally stuck your knife in. He couldn't blame the fool, only himself. He had been expecting the betrayal after all. His hand reached for the wound, but when his fingers grazed it at his side, the pain scraped through his body like a brush of needles and he had to tighten every bit of himself to keep from screaming again. Stuck me in the side and not the throat. Bastard wanted me to suffer if I lived through the fall.

Somewhere deeper in the Burg, a dog howled.

Lautrec punched the cursed snow beneath his fist that had, unintentionally, prolonged his life. I will not be eaten by dogs, he thought,

clawing at the snow to try and pull free from the pit he'd sunken into. Let my blood leave my body until I am too cold to draw breath, but I will not be a meal for those beasts. At least... not a live feast. He took a breath, dug his elbows into the snow at either of his sides, and pushed. The pain wrapped around his body in a grip of agony. His leg felt like it was being pulled straight off, and his wounded side screamed at him every time it scraped an icy patch of frozen snow. Still, Lautrec tightened his fists as tight as he ever had and forced himself to push on through the pain. His lower back and rear came free of the snow that had imprisoned them, and then he was rolling down a tuft of gentler, looser, snow. He came to a stop with his cheek pressed to the stone pavement of the Burg's street and his shoulder decided to join his leg and side in their symphony of pain. When he shifted it at an odd angle, the bone within caught fire and stabbed a dagger through his entire arm. He cried out again and flopped to his back, clutching at the injured shoulder and trying his best to keep his leg as still as possible, lest it join in and then the pain would likely be too much to bear to remain conscious.

He laid still awhile, sucking cold air through clenched teeth and watching fresh snow dropping lazily from the dark skies to rest upon his face. Another howl came, closer now, and Lautrec realized he didn't have the time to rest. He looked to his left, to his right, and tried orienting himself. Too far from Domhnall's, he thought. This is a whole different section of the Lower Burg I've never even seen. Likely abandoned. Your only hope is yourself, Lautrec. A knight focuses on his weapon at hand and his opponent before him. His good arm grasped weakly at his sheath for his shotel and came up empty. He forced his head to lift and saw he hadn't just missed, the weapon was gone, likely flung free in the fall from the bridge. He cursed and looked to the other sheath. His second shotel was still there, though the handle and the blade looked oddly unaligned. He reached across his body, wincing, and ripped it free. The weapon had gone a bit crooked, but it would still swing, still kill, and it felt good in his hand. Let them come, Lautrec thought. Let the dogs come and it will be I who feasts on them.

He surveyed the perimeter. Two wide streets wound away from him at either of his sides, their sidewalks caked with snow, their roads layered in ice. An alleyway poked out of the dark on one end, an arched passageway spilled into some other part of the city at the other. If they swarm me, it's over, Lautrec thought. He looked behind him to the nearest building. The door was on its hinges, but it was an old, warped and wooden, thing, and he thought he might be able to kick it open if he could get his good leg in front of it.

The baleful and ominous sound of paws scraping at the icy streets filled the night. Lautrec had no more time for planning. He took another breath, readied his mind for the pain that would surely follow, and threw his shotel back to dig into a patch of snow behind him. It bit the snow, Lautrec turned on his side (clenching his jaw to fight through the flare of pain in

his leg, shoulder, and side), and pulled. His limp and partially useless body slid forward on the ice a few inches. He wrestled the shotel free, threw, and dug again. He pulled, pain threatening to spill his mind into the dark void of unconsciousness, and when he had moved a few inches, repeated the process.

The dogs were seeping into the streets, liquid shadows stalking forth in the night, by the time he'd finally gotten positioned in front of the wooden door. He glanced down the roads at them coming from every angle-materializing from every shadow and nook the Burg had to offer- and entrenched his arms in the snow at his sides before leaning into his upper back and positioning his good leg towards the door. "Come on," Lautrec whispered, and again the blanket of black threatened to shut his eyes. He shook his head, focused, and shouted as he drove his foot into the wood.

It shuddered a bit, and a damp thud accompanied the blow, but it was otherwise indifferent to his attack. Lautrec cursed the door and took a moment to deal with the pain his kick had awoken in his other leg. He stole a glance down one end of the road and saw the dogs were rapidly approaching, skittering forth with their snouts lowered to the ground. He swallowed his pain, focused on the door again, and kicked.

He missed, the steel of his golden boot scraping loudly against the stone foundation that made up the doorway's arched lining. How could I possibly miss something right in front of me!? He grunted, punched at the snow, and kicked again. This time the blow landed, but the door shrugged off the attack with as much indifference as the first blow.

He could smell their breath now, hear their tongues lolling about in their enormous mouths, licking at the fangs within. He was getting ready to kick again when movement caught in his periphery. One bold dog had broken free from the pack and was darting towards him with its jaw snapping, its eyes rolling, its paws digging at the street to hurry its attack. Lautrec cocked his shotel back in a wide arc, waited til the beast neared, and slashed it across the monster's throat just as it leapt for him. The blade cut through the dog's flesh easy enough, and Lautrec was doused in a warm spray of blood as it's limp body flailed past him to slide and come to a motionless halt in the snow. The sight of a fallen pack member seemed to enrage the beasts further, and a chorus of growls filled the air.

His window of time rapidly slamming shut, Lautrec roared a war cry and began thundering his boot into the wooden door in rapid succession. On the fifth kick, he twisted onto his bad shoulder by mistake and an explosion ripped through his entire arm, from joint to joint to wrist and back. He yelled, fell back to the snow, and when his head smacked the cold, wet, street, he felt the dark coming again. He winced and looked to his left, but the street was gone, and Rose with her milky breasts peeking from under the blankets had returned. "Come to bed, Lautrec," she whispered.

"No!" He shouted, snapping his eyes open. If I slip under for even a moment, they will swarm me, he thought, fighting to stay awake.

He weakly drove his boot into the door once more. It didn't budge, and when he tried again, his leg fell away from the door with an exhaustion he could not fight through. The dogs pattered forth, their talon-like feet clicking on the icy roads, their growls growing so loud and ubiquitous, Lautrec felt they were no longer living only in the street, but in his head as well; in his soul.

"Knight," the voice came from beside him, and it was no longer Rose's. He turned to see Quelana laying beside him. She reached out and put her hand to his face, and her fingers were as warm as fire itself. "Come with me."

"...burn them..." he managed to croak as his eyelids turned to steel, threatening to close over the eyes within forever. "...help me..."

Quelana's smiled, it looked unnatural and queer on her pale face. She shook her head. "You don't need anyone's help, remember? A knight's concerns are the weapon at hand and the opponent before him. Not me. Not help." It was his father's voice coming from the witch's lips.

"I do... help me..." he groaned, dog breath on his face now, warm and moist and foul. "...witch..."

Teeth sunk into his arm.

-o-o-o-

"That's the thing about reality," Devon said, his voice slightly distorted by the leaf of grass he chewed in the side of his mouth. "It's hard sometimes to tell what's what, you know? Dreams... they say that's the Gods talking to you. I don't know. You believe that?"

Lautrec lifted his head and a fog fell from his vision. The countryside came into clear view around him, a wash of greens and blues and yellow and red flowers. It was spring, and the air had a freshness to it that only spring could. Trees sprouted up from the ground along the path they rode, and a flock of birds sat in their branches, chirping and singing. He was on horseback, a knight like the boy he had been had always hoped, and Devon was beside him on a white mare of his own, garnished in grey steel and dark leathers. Lautrec put a hand to his head and turned to his friend, confused. "What were you saying? I think... I was having the strangest dream."

Devon looked to him and raised an eyebrow. The horse's hooves clopping along the paved road was the only sound accompanying them as his friend's mouth curled into a grin and laughed. "Nothing. Nothing at all, Lautrec."

"Where are we?" Lautrec asked. He put a hand to his side to check for blood or injury and, thankfully, came up with neither.

"Going to get Ana. That is what you wanted, right?" Devon asked. "It was as you that said she's supposed to be down this way. Me? I was happy back in Carim. There were girls there," he said, his grin widening, "and I'd have something a whole lot prettier than this mare between my legs."

Lautrec looked to the sky, listening to the clop clop clop of his horse's hooves, and squinted at the odd, pastel, coloring of the clouds. The sun was there beside them, and it was yellow again; yellow and full and warm and alive. "This is a dream, Devon," Lautrec said, turning from the sky. "Our sun is dead." He stared at the features of his friend's face and could see the future that awaited him, awaited both of them. Clarity, for once, entered his mind: he was dreaming of the past. "We will be taken by surprise a ways down the road by Oswald and a band of his men. They've been sent to stop us. To... absolve us of our sins."

"Oswald?" Devon questioned. "The pardoner? Velka's Servant?"

Lautrec nodded. "They catch us, Devon, and you lose your life. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to get you dragged into this whole thing. I only wanted to catch up with Ana and... make things right." Devon said nothing, so Lautrec went on. "You'll be dead and I'll be taken prisoner and locked up in the attic of the Parish's church." He stared bitterly at those dreamlike clouds. Below them, the faint outline of the church was coming into view as their horses drew near. "And that is to be my fate for eternity. Locked in an endless cycle of this one, terrible, day. In a way, Devon, you were the one who caught the Gods' favor on this day. You get to rest. Me? ...I must solider on... maybe forever."

Devon laughed. "Quite the story, my friend. You think that up while you were daydreaming watching those clouds?"

"I wasn't daydreaming," Lautrec snapped.  
"Lautrec," Devon said with another laugh. "You are dreaming." "I was only watching the clouds. I-"  
"Look again," Devon said.

-o-o-o-

Lautrec looked. The sky was no longer that perfect blend of blue and white. It was black; black as his mother and father's charred corpses. Hands were on him, holding him by the waist, and he was wracked with so much pain he could barely think. It was cold again and a torch bearer was before him, swinging their flaming stick in the night like a mad man. Lautrec groaned and began struggling in the arms of his captor. It was cold. Wind raked across his face as he fought.

"Stop it, young fellow! Stop it, you hear?" A voice, gruff and as haggard as the crumbling buildings of the Burg around them, came from his shoulder. "You want to get us all killed?"

"Let... go..." Lautrec managed, but his eyes were drooping shut again. He shook his head to keep them alert.  
"Andre, they're coming!" The torchbearer's voice pleaded in the night. It was the voice of a young woman, muffled beneath a helm.

Andre? Not Domhnall. No, of course not. Domhnall is small... this man is... big... the blacksmith? Lautrec wondered. He tried wrestling free of the man's grip again, but the arms around his waist were like iron trunks coiling him.

"Fall back, woman," the man's gruff voice barked. "Fall back! Drop the torch, get your shield up and fall back!"

Lautrec's head slumped to his chest, and when the torch went out, so did his consciousness.

-o-o-o-

Lautrec could not be sure, but he believed the next time he opened his eyes, he had slept for a long, long, time. The sleep had been, graciously, dreamless, and when his vision focused and the brown, drab, ceiling of the church's attic came into view, he was sure the dreaming part of his pain and injury were over. He knew that ceiling well; it was, perhaps, the most real thing he knew of in Lordran. He swallowed, took a breath, and lifted his head enough to peer down at his body. It was lying on a cot in his prison, and his leg and side were bandaged. His right shoulder was in a sling, pressed to his body, and he could feel the bone within had been reset.

"The cycle..." he croaked, his voice coarse and dry from lack of use. This is not the cycle repeating, he told himself, though he wasn't sure if he was telling himself the truth, or something he could not bear to hear otherwise. Your leg is still hurt. Your shoulder. Your side. If you had died and this whole thing had reset... you would be healthy again. He lied still, staring at the ceiling he had stared at for long, long, hours in another life, another time. ...unless we broke the cycle by going to the Asylum... and the only thing we changed was that now our pain follows us from one life to the next.

It was with those torturous thoughts he laid there pondering for a time, too afraid to move and shatter some bone that had not yet healed, when the woman appeared behind the barred door of his cell. Her appearance startled him so deeply, he jerked on the cot and nearly rolled off its edge. His side hurt, but nothing like it had before. He laid still again and set his eyes upon the woman watching him. She was tall, square-shouldered, and had none of the beauty Quelana possessed. Her hair was a mousy shade of

brown, hanging over her forehead in unkempt bangs, and her nose was round and lightly freckled. She watched him for awhile, hazel eyes peering carefully beneath those bangs, before she spoke. "Are you Lautrec?"

Her voice was almost comically sweet, as if a child had stolen into the woman's body and taken the vocal chords for her own. Lautrec took a breath and shifted a bit on the cot, feeling the pressure mount in his bandaged leg. He saw no point of lying; not anymore. "Yes."

The woman nodded, pursing her lips and watching him just as carefully. "Andre says you're a murderer. Is that true?"

"I'm a knight. All knight's are murderers."  
"But not all knight's kill innocent, defenseless, woman." "No, and neither does this knight."

She frowned, and the expression made her plain face into an ugly one. "Then you deny your intention to hunt down and murder Anastacia of Astora?"

"No," he said, scoffing at the word 'Astora'. "But Anastacia is no innocent woman."

The woman stared at him for a long while then, pursing out her lips and shifting from foot to foot. "We saved your life, you know."

"I do know," Lautrec said. "You have my gratitude."

"We spotted you yesterday from afar. On the bridge? We didn't make it in time for whatever commotion went on there. Thought maybe you were with Domhnall of Zena. We're looking for him."

Though the woman hadn't asked, Lautrec knew she was waiting for an answer nonetheless. "Yes, I met him. He is in the Burg, though quite a bit further on than I was. He is alive. Safe. He gave me and my traveling companions food and shelter for two nights."

"You can take us to him then?"

"If I wasn't in a cage? Absolutely."

The woman scoffed. "It's not going to be that easy. Andre doesn't know what to make of you. Why were you and your 'companions' so far from the Archives? No one wonders that far anymore unless they have a death wish."

"Clearly, you did..." Lautrec pointed out.  
"We have our reasons," the woman said. "And they're none of your

business."

"And yet you demand to know my business?"

The woman smirked and it turned her plain-face into a... slightly less plain face. "That's right. That's the benefit of being on this side of the cell door."

Lautrec sighed. He could joust with this woman for another hour, but it would likely do him no good. "I've come from the Undead Asylum... and possible even another world. My companions and I were heading to these 'Archives' you speak of to learn more about what is happening to the world. Why it seems to be... dying. I can see by that look on your face that you think I'm lying, but I assure you I am not. None of us were aware of the state of Lordran when the great crow carried us here from the Asylum." He waited for her to refute him. When she didn't, he went on. "We were ambushed on the bridge by a group of men. I believe the Knight Solaire was amongst them, as a captive. I recognized his armor."

The girl's mouth fell agape and her eyes widened. She laced her fingers together and held them to her heart. "Go on..." she pleaded.

Lautrec raised a brow at the girl's strange reaction. "This is information you wish to hear?"

She swallowed, nodded.  
"Then open this cage up and let us talk in more... open confines."

She quickly shook her head. "No, I can't! Andre wouldn't let me! Please! Just tell me who was with Solaire!"

"Open the door, and I will," Lautrec told her.

"I don't have a key," she pleaded, grabbing the bars and squeezing them until her knuckles went white.

"Then my memory seems to fail me."

"Please!" She shouted, her brow creased, and tears swelled in her eyes.

Lautrec was taken aback by the woman's reaction. He stared at her for a moment. This information is the only thing you have that is of value to her, he thought. Throw it away here... and you may never see the outside of this cell.

"...please..." she tried once more.

This is the girl's influence on you, he thought. Abby... how proud your naive little face would grow if you saw such sickening kindness. He sighed. "The Knight of Thorns was among them. Kirk, his name is. Ugly man, not much in a straight fight. Laurentius the Pyromancer. A third

man in a top hat and a mask with a crossbow was with them, too. I believe I heard him called 'Chester'." The woman's eyes were locked onto his, waiting, and so he added, "That was all. If there were anymore, they weren't on the bridge."

"No..." she whimpered, and the tears that were only swelling in her eyes earlier now burst to the surface and rolled down her freckled cheeks. "You didn't see a man in large, round, armor? Siegmeyer, his name is. You didn't see a man like that?"

"No," Lautrec told her honestly, wondering what importance the man could possible hold. "I know of the knight. He certainly wasn't among them. Hails from Catarina, no?"

The woman's lip quivered, she sniffled and rubbed her palm into her eye. "Y-Yes. I am Sieglinde. He is... my father. And now, I suppose... he is no more..." With that, the woman burst into sobs, turned, and rushed away from the cell door.

"Wait!" Lautrec called after her, but when he moved to stand, a bolt of pain took his entire right side and he had to clench his fists and lay back against the cot til it passed.

Wounded and caged, Lautrec could do nothing but await her return, and soon enough he had drifted to sleep. His dreams were plagued with visions of fires and screaming, of burnt corpses and of promise made in the darkness of night.

And of a whole man's life thrown away by the actions of a girl he used to skip stones with at the ponds.

Chapter 14

Anor Londo, from their vantage point high above its streets along the outer wall, was a breathtaking display of human architecture; buildings on top of buildings, wide and winding streets wrapping the lower levels, great stone statues watching over the upper ones, polished gold trimming around massive panes of stained glass colorfully decorated with scenes of warriors and beasts and landscapes unlike anything Quelana had ever heard about. Looking out upon it all as the pale sun was lowering behind the Western stand of towers and churches, she found herself clutching dearly to Abby's robed arm beside her and forcing her breathing to remain calm. She could not understand why any creature would want to build such a massive, confusing, maze of stone and glass, even as beautiful as it was. Abby's hand reached out and took her own, giving it a squeeze. Quelana forced an uneasy smile at the girl and lowered her gaze from the city sprawled before her to her hand. "Thank you."

Abby returned the smile and looked to Anor Londo herself. The sight didn't bother her at all; in fact, it seemed to have quite the opposite affect. The girl's eyes were narrowed in determination, the last bit of pale sun washing her face in a warm glow. "They are out there, Quelana. They are waiting for me."

Quelana swallowed and forced a nervous glance back to the city. Abby hadn't been very talkative since the night in the forest when the creatures of the woods had come to free them, but when she did speak, it was only of this 'army' that waited them in Anor Londo: an army of hollowed soldiers and demons and beasts alike. The very thought of it made Quelana want to grab the girl and steal her away back to Blighttown where it was safe; where she could protect her. She'd learned, though, that whatever was happening to Abby was beyond her understanding. The more they traveled, the more convinced Quelana became that the girl was not just sure of herself, but absolutely convinced she knew what she was doing. She soldiered forward now in a zealous, relentless, way that Quelana had seen only in her most pious of pupils back in Blighttown.

And so, when Abby squeezed her hand and stared into the city, Quelana only sighed and stared herself. "Will they hurt you?" She asked after a long moment of silence.

Abby squinted. "I don't believe so. They want me to succeed. I don't see what harming me would accomplish." At that moment, the grey wolf that had been accompanying them since the forest wrestled its way between them and rubbed its head against Abby's leg. Abby smiled and lowered her hand to stroke his fur. "And me new friend here will protect me." She lifted her gaze. "As will you and the Warrior of the Sun, Solaire. I do not doubt your abilities. I will... I am in good hands."

Quelana nodded, turning back to look at the 'sun warrior' and the rest of

their traveling companions waiting a bit further down the wall. The masked crossbowmen, Chester, had slipped away from them in the woods the first night they set out, but the rest had seemed too frightened of either the wolf, of Solaire, or of her to attempt a similar trick, and so they remained in their company. Both Kirk and Laurentius looked miserable and anxious to return to whatever home awaited them all at this 'Duke's Archives' they spoke of. Patches hadn't said a word since leaving the forest, choosing instead to cradle his smashed hand and do his best to stay out of everyone's way. Quelana had pleaded with Abby to allow her to either dispose of the men or send them on their way, but Abby was insistent on 'not dealing judgement' like 'savage executioners', and so Quelana held her tongue-and her anger-and simply avoided looking at or speaking with the men on their travels. Solaire, at least, was keeping a vigilant eye on them, his straight sword never leaving his hand the entire time.

The moment when the power would shift was nearly upon them, though, and Quelana could feel it coming like many a storm she'd seen brewing high above Blighttown in younger years; baleful and ominous darkness ready to crash down upon them in a flash. She turned back to Abby and leaned above the wolf to speak quietly. "Abby... if you are insistent on meeting with this 'Logan' man that they claim leads the humans now, please exercise every bit of caution. Any man who send savages like those out on a mission can not be very trustworthy."

"Solaire speaks highly of him," Abby said, scratching the wolf under its snout. "And Solaire is a good man. Perhaps this Logan, like Solaire himself, was deceived by the other men's cruelties."

"Then a man who could be deceived so easily is not trustworthy either," Quelana warned. "Not to mention the merchant from the Burg, Domhnall, didn't seem to care for the man..."

"Quelana... if the last of my species is gathered under one roof, I have to meet with them. Once I set foot in Anor Londo..." She paused, staring absently down to the city streets below the wall. "There is no turning back. I'd like to see them. I'd like to look upon their faces. It will give me strength if I should ever find myself lacking in the coming endeavors."

Quelana shifted uncomfortably. The more the girl spoke of her 'quest', the more it sounded like a suicide mission. She wasn't sure what would happen when and if Abby lit this bonfire at the Kiln of the First Flame, and that unknown element frightened her more than any of the looming towers of massive stone before her. She'd asked Abby about what would happen at the end of all this the first night they were free in the forest, but Abby had avoided the subject, and so she'd probed no further. If this quest costs the girl her life, Quelana thought, can it truly be worth it? I can only hope that this Logan and his men have some other plan the girl will listen to. Some other answer to the cold. And to the dark. All of our lives seem to hang in the balance of what awaits us at the 'Duke's Archives'. She

lifted her gaze to the Northwest, where the silhouette of a cluster of rounded towers stood caked with heavy snowfall. The castle loomed high over Anor Londo, high over them, as if it were watching. As if it were waiting.

"I suppose we should move if we want to stay ahead of the dark," Abby said, tracing the line of Quelana's eyes to the Archives herself. She ruffled the wolf's fur between the ears and the beast licked at her fingers and set off at a trot towards the arched section of wall that looked to wrap and wind up to an entrance of some sort. "Are you ready?" She asked, and when Quelana-with some hesitation-nodded, Abby smiled and stuck out her hand for Quelana to take.

"My ladies," Solaire greeted them further down the wall. He cast a wary eye at the three men who stood beside him. "If we are to depart, let these cravens take point. I shall stay close behind them at the ready for any trickery or deceptions. When we reach the Archives, I will inform Logan of their treacherous actions."

Kirk snorted and spit at the knight's boots, Laurentius lowered his face shamefully so that his hood hid him, and Patches avoided eye contact with any of them, rubbing at his bandaged hand. None said anything back to the knight, however, and so Abby nodded, Solaire bowed to her, and they were off. Quelana glanced back over her shoulder at the sprawling city of white and gold below them, thankful to be away from its enormous, dizzying, presence.

The arched passage gave way to a great hall with a high ceiling and wide- set walls, at the end of which was a towering statue. As they neared, Quelana saw that it was of an enormous man in round plate armor, a tiny head protruding from its top, a massive great hammer clutched in its fists. Abby stared forth as they neared, her eyes fixed upon the stone figure. "That's the largest man I've ever seen." She turned to Solaire. "Was he really so big?"

"Afraid so, my lady," Solaire answered. The knight pointed forward with the tip of his sword. "He was the royal executioner of Anor Londo in his time." Solaire's face twisted into a grimace and he hesitated to continue for a moment before adding, "They say he grew so large because... he ate the bones of his victims."

"Oh..." Abby said, disheartened.

Solaire noticed her face and quickly shook his head. "But have no fear, my lady. The man is no more. He and his friend were vanquished at the hands of... well, another Chosen."

Kirk snorted derisive laughter. "Seems all sorts of things that should be dead ain't." The ugly knight fixed his dark eyes on Abby and sneered. "Best hope he ain't waiting to eat your bones in Anor Londo, girl."

"Silence!" Solaire commanded, pointing his sword at the man; he'd at least unarmed them back in the forest, and so Kirk could only glare, spit, and turn back to continue marching on. Solaire lowered his sword and turned back to Abby, offering a comforting smile. "I assure you, my lady, the man is no more."

"How can you be so sure?" Quelana questioned.

Solaire was quiet a moment, his eyes resting upon the blade of his sword, then he said, "Because I helped the last Chosen Undead defeat him myself," and said no more on the topic.

The great hall ended, and a twist of stone stairs began. It wrapped above and around a cliffside that spilled down to the city before dumping them out to a short trek through a wooded area, at the end of which was a long tunnel carved into the side of the mountain. As they neared, their legs kicking through the heavy snowfall that plagued the entrance, men began pouring out of its entrance.

"Abby," Quelana whispered, halted, and snatched the girl's arm.

Abby allowed herself to be stopped, and Solaire moved forth with his sword drawn. His eyes swept the men that had come to meet them. Quelana recognized none of them until a shorter man walked up at the rear of the pack with a crossbow in his hands and a tophat and jester's mask covering his head and face.

"It's about damn time," Kirk snapped and stepped quickly up beside Chester. "Put a bolt in the sun knight's big mouth and then kill them bitches behind him too."

The grey wolf at Abby's feet began snarling and stalking forth beside Solaire, his fur on edge, his teeth barred. The men at the entrance way, a half-dozen armed and armored in total, all took a step away from the wolf. Solaire drew his shield up and watched the men intensely from behind it. "What is this? Logan would never stand for such-"

"Shut up, knight," Chester's voice came slightly muffled beneath his mask. "We're not going to attack."

Kirk looked disappointed. "Piss on that."

"Logan wants to speak with the girl," Chester said. "She's not to be harmed."

A tall, fat, man waddled forth in black chain mail, his straw-colored hair cut into a bowl around his thick brow. In his chubby fingers, he held iron manacles and fetters. When Solaire spotted them he drew his sword a bit higher. "What deception is this, Petrus? Logan would not have us brought forth in chains! If you expect me to lay down my-"

"It isn't for you or the girl, Solaire," the fat man, Petrus apparently, said. He nodded to Quelana. "It's for the girl's witch."

All eyes fell on Quelana, and she found herself desperately wishing she was in her own robes where she could hide instead of these cumbersome leathers and wools that the humans wore. Abby looked from her back to the man and shook her head. "No. And she is Quelana, Mother of Pyromancy, not 'my witch'. She will not harm you, nor will my wolf or my knight," she said, and Quelana saw Solaire look to Abby confused for only a moment before a sense of pride painted his face. "We will not come bound in any way. You can take my terms to Logan. We will remain here."

The men stared forth at the young woman with the shaved head and the pretty blue eyes before them. Petrus' face was screwed up in a puzzled look. "My lady, we are not offering terms. This is how it must be. If you do not accept, we don't 'take your offer' back to Logan. We part ways."

Chester lifted his crossbow a bit higher. "Logan's no fool. He's not letting a witch with her kind of destructive power loose in our only solace from the world outside these walls." He looked to the wolf. "And your pet is to be muzzled as well. Don't be a fool, girl. Logan is offering generous terms."

Abby was quiet for only a moment. "Fine," she said and a sense of relief seemed to wash over the men standing warily before Solaire and the wolf. Petrus nodded and moved forth with the manacles til Abby continued, "Then we must bid you farewell." He froze, raising an eyebrow. "Tell Logan that I'm sorry we couldn't meet." She turned to Quelana and that confident little smile was on her lips. "Come, Quelana. Solaire. Our path lies elsewhere."

Abby stepped between them, the wolf backing up beside her, and Quelana's eyes met Solaire's. They did not speak, but their shared look told the same story. If we leave now, we leave into the cold night, alone and without supplies of any sort, Quelana thought. The knight will follow her, I can see the loyalty in his eyes, but he knows what a grave error it would be. We are but three, and the dark unknown that awaits us might be numerous, might be infinite, and to turn down both shelter and possible aid would be a fool's decision. Quelana looked down to the path that wound back towards the city. She could see the enormous buildings there, and the darkness that was stealing over them as night set upon Lordran. These men have us at a disadvantage and they know it, but what other choice do we have? "Abby," she called. "Wait."

A look of relief came to Solaire's face. He nodded and turned to Abby, who had turned back but did not begin moving forward again. "I know Logan is a good man," Solaire said, approaching each word slowly and thoughtfully. "I... I can give you my word he will not have us harmed if we accept these conditions."

"These conditions are ridiculous!" Abby snapped, the wolf's anger

seemingly tied to her own as it started growling. "What reason do they have to fear any of us? We've done nothing to them!"

"Tis only a caution, Abby," Quelana said, her words sounding weak and deceptive in her own ears. "The wolf and myself are dangerous. If the roles were reversed, we would be exercising the same precautions. Let them chain me."

"Your sword, knight," Petrus commanded of Solaire.

Solaire looked from the man to Quelana to Abby's puzzled face. He sighed, the clank of the sword falling to the fat man's feet resounding through the clearing. "Logan. He is... a good man," Solaire repeated. "He will bring us back the sun."

Abby's wide, blue eyes flicked from Solaire to Quelana. Quelana nodded, and Abby's face scrunched up angrily. She turned back to Anor Londo and stared at the city for a long moment before her shoulders slumped and she faced the men once more. "There is an army in that city. It awaits me to lead it. If any harm should befall me or my friends..."

"I'm sure it will come and smash us all to bits," Chester finished for her. "Can we hurry this up? Night comes and the winds grow cold. I'd rather be discussing this over a warm meal and a bit of wine, wouldn't you? Chain the witch. Muzzle the wolf."

Petrus approached Quelana warily. The big man was studying her apprehensively, as if she were a spring-loaded trap ready to fire upon him. When he cautiously reached forth to shackle her wrists, Abby stepped between them and took them from him. The man gave them up easy enough, looking relieved at not having to get any closer, and stepped away. Abby looked at them, that same anger burning quietly in her eyes, and sighed. "It's alright," Quelana said quietly and held out her hands. "These men do not frighten me. I have you on my side." That seemed to dissolve just a bit of Abby's frustration. The girl moved forth and locked her wrists together, traced the chain down to her feet, and did the same at her ankles. She was left with just enough slack to shuffle forward. Petrus tossed her a leather muzzle, and Quelana watched in wonder as Abby called to the wolf they'd picked up in the forest, and the great beast allowed her to muzzle it without even a bit of struggle. When it was done, Abby lowered her face to the top of the wolf's head and kissed, and Quelana could hear the thing whimper beneath her.

"You should muzzle the fire bitch," Patches added from behind them; Quelana had forgotten he was even there. "She took over my mind with just her tongue before! Bitch almost got me killed!"

Chester moved the crossbow from Solaire to Patches and cocked his head to the side. "Patches, what in the cursed hells are you still doing here? How has someone not killed you yet?"

Patches face turned to the color of spoiled milk. His eyes widened and he put up his hands, one bandaged, one not. "I-I was j-just saying-"

"Kill him," Kirk said with a laugh. "His bald head is too ugly to drag into the Archives. It'll scare off all the children."

"P-please!" Patches pleaded, dropping to his knees.

Some of the men behind Petrus laughed and Chester snickered with them. "Run away, hyena, before I put a bolt between your eyes."

"R-run away?" Patches echoed. He glanced back over his shoulder at the path they'd just come from. "It's going to be nighttime soon... I don't know where-"

"Is that our problem?" Chester asked. "Now I told you to run, hyena! Go on! Get!"

The man let a bolt fly. It bit the dirt right between Patches' knees. The bald man shrieked and tried scrambling away so fast, he tumbled back onto his ass. His injured hand landed beneath him and he cried out in agony, but another bolt thumped into the dirt beside him and he had to leap to his feet to get running. Kirk's booming laughter filled the clearing, and the rest of the men soon joined him. The last of Patches Quelana saw was a brief glimpse of his bald head as it dipped around the spiraling stone staircase that they'd arrived from. She felt no sympathy for the man. He had killed Lautrec. Or he hasn't, Quelana reminded herself. But if the knight lives... alone and injured... he won't live for long. The thought, she found with some surprise, saddened her. She wouldn't have called the man her 'friend' exactly, but... he was clever, strong, and determined - all qualities she wished she had beside her now.

"Let's go," Petrus commanded, stepping to the side so Solaire, Abby, and herself could move between the small convoy that had come to lead them in.

Abby sighed, glancing once more at Anor Londo before taking Quelana's arm in her own. They walked side-by-side, slowly so Quelana could keep us in her manacles and fetters, and passed beneath the tunnel entrance and into the long hall that would take them to the Archives, armed men all around them. The muzzled wolf trotted forward, and Quelana could swear she heard him whimper again as they moved deeper inside.

Their lives, their mission, and maybe the fate of Lodran itself now rested in this 'Logan's' hands. Quelana could only hope he was as good a man as Solaire claimed.

Chapter 15

He awoke with bolts of pain driving up into his knee, burrowing through his thigh and pelvis, and tearing a hole in his side where the bandage there had grown damp with blood. Lautrec balled his hands into fists and drove them into the cot at his sides, clenching his teeth and sucking cold air til the agony subsided. Slowly, the pain became manageable and his blurred vision came back into focus as his fists unclenched and his arched back lowered to the cot once again. His knee still throbbed, however, and whatever hideous scar lived beneath his bandaged abdomen felt hot and itchy and Lautrec wondered if a sickness had crept into it before whoever had found him had sewn it up. Fitting, he thought, to die from an infected wound left by a man I knew was a disease waiting to strike. Each time the wound flared in pain, it was a reminder of his mistake, and it was one he would not make again. Trust no one, a man older and wiser than himself had once told him. He had trusted Ana and had lost everything but his life. Now his mistake with Patches might cost him that as well.

He had been so disoriented from the harsh awakening of pain and so lost in his own thoughts, he hadn't even noticed he had company in his cell. When the large figure sitting atop a stool in the corner of the room caught in his periphery, though, he made the mistake of snapping up in the cot and his injured leg made him pay for it. He winced and grabbed at the flesh just above the knee, digging his fingers in and waiting out the agony. When it had dimmed, he turned back to the stool, where the blacksmith was watching him with a casual, almost disinterested, look. Lautrec stared at the man, narrowing his eyes cautiously.

Andre was his name. Lautrec had met him in... some other life, but he had never been so close to the man, and the sight of the blacksmith was, to say the least, impressive. The old man had a mame of white and grey hair that wrapped his head and chin and shoulders in an unkempt tangle. Beneath it all, the wrinkled face within housed a pair of dark eyes that-despite the man's very obvious, very old age-still held a younger man's energetic twinkle. His body was a towering foundation of muscle, bare above his leather loincloth and boots, save for the gloves he wore over his large hands. Lautrec had sparred with bigger men than himself, but never one as large as the blacksmith. The old man was running the blade of a longsword against a whetstone, and Lautrec could see the wiry muscles of his triceps and forearms coming alive with every flick of his wrist.

Lautrec waited for the blacksmith to say something now that he was clearly awake, but the old man only watched him with that same casual expression on his face, as if he were waiting for a pot of soup to boil over. Lautrec met the man's gaze and held, but said nothing himself. He wrestled up a bit on the cot, so that his back was against the cold stone wall behind him, and his injured leg stretched before him. The blacksmith continued to watch, the blade running across the whetstone in a rhythmic

shick, shick, shick.

What game is this? Lautrec wondered. He let his hand fall to his bandaged side and his fingers came away damp with blood. He grimaced and turned on the blacksmith. It's a power play. He wants me to come begging to him for aid. To dress my wounds. To hear me grovel my thanks for saving my life. To-

"Whatever you're thinking, knight, know I've killed better men than you with less than this blade," the old man spoke suddenly into the little room, his coarse voice booming and filling every inch of the cell. "So don't get any ideas."

Lautrec frowned. Perhaps the blacksmith wasn't playing any game. "Are you suggesting I'm planning to attack you? Seems like a foolish plan considering you're twice my size and I'm unarmed and wounded."

"I know of you, Lautrec of Carim," the blacksmith said, still running the blade against the stone at his lap. "I know you're a man who will stop at nothing to get what you want."

"A rather harsh judgement to be made so quickly, no?" Lautrec asked. Ana, he thought. He's talking about Ana. The whole of Lordran seems to despise me for that. "You're alluding to the firekeeper that I was after."

"You killed five of Oswald's men trying to get her," the old man went on. "I met with them five. Drank with them. They weren't easy men to kill."

"All men are easy to kill if you know where to cut," Lautrec told him. "And speaking of which, what did you do with my shotels? You're a blacksmith, I'm sure you can appreciate the fine craftsmanship of the weapons. I intend to get them back before I leave here."

"Who said you're leaving here, knight?"

"Whether I do or whether I don't... I'm taking back those blades."

The blacksmith stopped sharpening the longsword lain across his knee and the lines of his face tightened ever-so-slightly around his wrinkled eyes and mouth. "Watch your tongue, young fellow. It's still in question on whether your life is worth letting you keep or not."

"You went through a whole lot of trouble to save this life," Lautrec pointed out. "Would be a shame to throw it away now, wouldn't it?"

"Wasn't trying to save your life when we came across ya," the blacksmith said. "You just happened to be there. Gods paid ya a favor, I s'pose."

"Then perhaps I'm not all monster," Lautrec said, and when the blacksmith's face darkened again, he went on, "Listen. I came here a long time ago now, to kill a firekeeper. That is true. It's never going to be

untrue. If that is reason enough to condemn me, spare me this conversation and stick my throat with that blade of yours already. If it's not, then tell me what you want from me."

The blacksmith raised one of his bear claws of a hand to his bearded chin and scratched. "First thing I want is to know if you're a spy or not."

"A spy?"

"Aye. For Logan."

"No."

"No?"

"No, I'm not a spy for Logan," Lautrec clarified. "Now answer a question of mine."

The blacksmith frowned, the indignation clear upon his face. "You're in no position to be making demands, young fellow."

"No demand," Lautrec said. "Only an attempt to gain some mutual ground of trust and amicability with one another so that this process of conversing isn't so arduously painful."

"I'm not as smart as you, knight," the old man said, pointing a finger his way, "but don't think you can confuse me with yer fancy words and yer tricks." Lautrec thought he'd awake the man's anger if he replied immediately, so he waited, and the blacksmith went on. "Ask yer question. But don't expect an answer if I don't care for it."

"Why would Logan send a spy after you?"

The old man's brow lifted, clearly surprised by the question. He stared at Lautrec a moment, turning the longsword over in his lap a half-dozen times as he did. Finally, he said, "Because Logan's a madman whose growing more paranoid as the days go by. Me and... well, me and another fled from the Archives." He narrowed his dark eyes on Lautrec and leaned forward. "And even though I'm not as smart as you are, I know how to kill a man pretty good. If I think you just lied to me and you are Logan's man... I'll bleed you."

"Fair enough," Lautrec said, not shrinking away from the hulking figure of the man. "What's your next question?"

The blacksmith leaned back on his stool, turned his head, and spit to the stone floor beside him. When he looked back on Lautrec, he raised the sword from his lap and pointed the tip his way. "Second question depends on the first. If you speak true... why would you ever leave the Archives?"

"You left them..."

"Answer me."

Lautrec sighed. "I told Sieglinde," he began, noting the way the old man's face darkened upon revealing the woman had told him her name, "I'm not from the Archives. I've never even been there."

"No?" The blacksmith questioned, a jagged and mirthless laugh erupting from his throat. "And how is it you've survived the cold all this time?"

Lautrec shrugged. "Same as any other man, I suppose. You do what you do to get by. Also, I've only come to this... cold world of Lordran a few days past. Before this I was gone... perhaps a very long time... to the Undead Asylum."

"Do you hope to make your lies so outlandish I fool myself into believing them?" The blacksmith questioned. "The Asylum sunk into the ocean weeks ago, and the only thing to ever come from there was the Chosen Undead and a very, very, big crow."

"I don't expect you to take my word for this, especially considering you already think me a murderous monster, but this is the truth of it. I have no other story to tell, because that is my story."

The old man squinted. "Aye? Then I s'pose you've been telling anyone you met that little tale?"

"I've only met one other man besides you upon returning to Lordran, but yes. I told the same story."

"Where is Domhnall?"

"It's my turn to ask a question," Lautrec said, and before the blacksmith could yell at him, he went on, "If you squeeze the last bit of useful information I have from me, do you ever intend to set me free from this cell?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"On what kind of man Domhnall says you are if we find him. If yer story matches his. If I think you can accomplish what I want you to accomplish..."

"You have a task for me? Is that it?" Lautrec asked, and suddenly things were starting to clear in his mind. Of course he kept you alive and locked up, he thought. He wants something from you more valuable than simple information.

"We'll see," the blacksmith said, rising from his stool. The grey and white blizzard of hair hung loose around his chest as he did, and his muscular

figure was even more imposing as he towered over the cot, longsword clutched in his meaty hand. "Sieglinde," he called over his shoulder.

The tall and square-shouldered woman who'd first come to him in the cell appeared behind the barred door of the room. Her freckled nose pressed against a bar as she leaned forward to fix her hazel eyes upon the smith.

"The map," the old man said, reaching his hand back.

The woman dug into a satchel at her waist and fished out a tattered piece of paper. She stuck her fingers between the bars and lowered the edge of it into the man's hand. He took it, snapped his wrist so the paper straightened, and flicked it down to the cot between Lautrec's legs. Lautrec lifted it, cocking his head to study the messy scrawling etched on its face. It was a hand-drawn map of the Burg. Lautrec lifted a brow and looked to the blacksmith. "What do you want me to do with this?"

"Sieglinde tells me you stayed two nights on with Domhnall," the old man said. "Point out his lodging on that there map."

This is it, Lautrec thought, my last bit of information. What other option do I have, though? I can only hope the man really does intend to send me on some mission. He found Domhnall's place rather easily. It was the tallest building on the far edge of the map in the Lower Burg. He pointed it out and extended the paper for the blacksmith to see.

"Aye?" The old man growled. "That's a far journey, young fellow." He lifted his face to Lautrec and furrowed his brow. "I should inform you that both Sieglinde and myself are intending to go find him. That leaves you here alone and locked up. If we should fall... you'll never see the outside of this cell."

"And what if I am telling the truth, but you should fall anyway?" Lautrec asked, though he thought already knew the answer.

The blacksmith grinned. "If I were you, knight, I'd pray that doesn't happen." He reached beneath the stool and raised two brass pots from beneath. He set them on the cot beside Lautrec's injured leg. "This one here has fresh water in it. This one is for your waste. A pot fer drinkin' and a pot fer pissin'. I wouldn't confuse the two."

"No," Lautrec agreed, eyeing the pot with water greedily. He hadn't had a drink in quite some time.

"Here," the blacksmith said, tossing a half-eaten loaf of bread onto the bedding beside the pots. "It's a bit moldy, but you can eat around it. We ain't wasting the good supplies on you till we know what kind of man you are. The spot you pointed out is at least a day away. Burg's too dangerous at night, so we'll have to stay there... if you tell it true and Domhnall is there."

"He'll be there," Lautrec said, though the realization that the man and Benjamin might've left dawned upon him. If the blacksmith and the tall woman came upon an empty home... they'd likely come back and cut his throat while he slept.

"I hope he is, young fellow," the blacksmith said with a nod of his head. He pointed at the cell door and Sieglinde stuck a key inside and opened it. "I don't know what business you and that poor firekeeper had with each other, but if Domhnall says yer decent... I'll have work for you when yer leg heals up a bit more. Consider it payment for saving yer life."

"Andre..." Sieglinde said softly and her face wrinkled with a look of sadness.

The blacksmith looked from her back to Lautrec. "Ah, yes. I, er... the lady wants to know if you were telling the truth about Siegmeyer yesterday. Was he really absent among Solaire and his men on the bridge?"

"Yes," Lautrec said, lifting the stale bread and tearing a chunk of mold away to bite into it. "And Solaire himself was in ropes. I don't know if that means anything to you."

Sieglinde sucked a breath of air in awkwardly, as if she'd forgotten how, and quickly disappeared from the doorway.

"Sieg!" Andre called to her. When she did not reply, he frowned, went to the door, and stepped outside the cell before turning back to Lautrec once more. "If I were you, I'd ask the Gods to keep watch over us on our travels."

"If I were you," Lautrec told him. "So would I."

The cell door slammed shut, the lock clicked into place, and the blacksmith vanished around the edge of the wall. Lautrec was alone once again, but at least he had something to eat and drink as well as something to relieve himself into, which he did immediately.

-o-o-o-

No natural light could enter the cell up high in the Parish church's top floor, and the torch glowing outside in the hall had died in its sconce a few hours after the blacksmith and his woman had departed, and so Lautrec had no idea of how much time had passed after he'd dozed off. He awoke to blackness, his hands fumbling around on the floor beside his bedding for the pot of water. He found it and drank, the cool water within a soothing welcome on his hoarse throat. His leg still throbbed, but the pain was getting better, and he figured before long he'd be able to walk. That was a good thing. Blood still cake his bandaged side, but it was dry and hard, and he hoped that meant the wound beneath had finally stopped leaking. He laid there for awhile, taking the occasional sip of water as his thoughts turned to Quelana and Abby and what had become

of them. Dead, most likely, he thought. Those men didn't look seem the prisoner-taking type. If they were lucky, they died quickly. If not... He didn't want to think of the other option. The two were no friends of his, but-despite what most of Lordran seemed to think-he was no monster, and did not wish ill on either of them. He wondered if somehow they still yet lived on, what had become of them.

He drifted to sleep again with those thoughts.

-o-o-o-

When next he woke, there was sound outside the cell door, but the blackness was still present, and he could see nothing. The sound of feet scraping stone came, and this time-fully awake-he was sure he'd heard it. Lautrec lifted his head, thankful that his leg hadn't screamed at him for the sudden movement, and cocked his head to listen. Faintly but distinctly, the sound of breathing drifted from just outside the room. Lautrec considered calling out, but thought better of it. If whomever was out there was not Andre or Sieglinde, he did not want his presence to be known, and unless they had cat's eyes nestled in their skull, they could not get a look at him without allowing a look at themselves. He stilled his breath and listened more intently. There was two people breathing at least, but now it seemed as if they were trying to remain quiet as well. They could stick a crossbow through the bars, Lautrec thought bitterly, or a spell. He closed his eyes and pulled up a layout of the room. It was easy enough: he had spent a lot of time here before he'd set out on this whole mad adventure. The cell door had an angle on almost every inch of the room, save for the corner opposite his cot. Can you walk? Lautrec questioned, grabbing at his knee to see how much pain flared there. When only a mild stab answered him, he slowly swung his legs off the cot and pressed his feet to the floor. When he lowered to it, the pressure on his leg almost collapsed him, but he got his hands beneath him in time and crawled off the cot.

Whispers came from just outside the door. Lautrec knew he was making too much noise, but there was nothing that could be done about it. He pulled himself into the corner of the cell and pressed his back to the wall. He waited in the black silence, but all noises had ceased from outside the door. If they're intent on killing me, there are ways past a locked door, he thought. But I will at least glimpse my killer's face. I can at least do that. He reached for the foot of his uninjured leg and pulled the golden boot from it. It came off easy enough, and then he was crawling forth on his belly towards the door, careful to keep any pressure off of his wounded side. When he was in striking distance, he lifted the boot high and drove it down at the stone wall with as much strength as he could muster.

The metal clashed with the stone and a shower of sparks rained from the impact. In the brief light he saw them: two dirty faces of a boy and a girl, no older than seven or eight. They vanished into the darkness as quick as they had come, and then he heard their little feet shuffling away in a

panic, the girl shrieking, the boy hushing her with angry whispers. Children? Lautrec thought, resting up against the wall as a wash of relief came over him. Now that is interesting...

-o-o-o-

It was after two more naps that, finally, torchlight filled the hall outside his cell once more. Lautrec had no idea how much time had passed, but he felt it had to have been enough for a man and woman to get to the Lower Burg and back. When he heard the blacksmith's gruff voice mutter something, he sighed relief. Now as long as Domhnall was there... and alive...

Andre's massive figure appeared in the doorway, the torch he carried sending an even more massive figure of a shadow along the wall beside him. He squinted into the cell and growled, "Still alive in there, knight?"

"I am," Lautrec answered.

Andre was quiet for a moment as he nodded his head. "Yer story checks out."

"That's good," Lautrec said. "Now arm yourself."

"Arm myself?" The blacksmith snapped. "You lookin' for a fight now, young fellow?"

"You've got intruders," Lautrec told him. "Take up arms and clear the church."

He saw the old man's face darken considerably beside the torch, the orange glow accentuating every aged wrinkle on his brow. "How many?"

"I only saw two children," Lautrec said. "But who knows how many men they could be traveling with."

Andre's posture loosened and the big man released a breath of relief. "Thank the Gods." He swiped at his brow and looked in on Lautrec. "The kids... they're with us. S'pose I should've locked them up too, little rascals. I told 'em to stay put."

Lautrec frowned. "Why would you travel with children?"

Andre made a groaning noise not dissimilar to the sound a dog makes when its tired. He dug into the pocket of his loin cloth and fetched out a key. "Domhnall lives. A young man calls himself 'Benjamin' too. They both confirmed yer mad story... as unbelievable as it it. Dom... he vows for your character as well. S'pose that means I'll be letting you out. I also s'pose that means I have a few things to fill you in on."

Lautrec nodded; this close to freedom, he had no intention of botching it

with his tongue.

Andre fixed him with a shrewd look. "Don't mean I won't have my eye on ya. Understood?"

Again, Lautrec only nodded.

The blacksmith plugged the keyhole with the key and the door swung open. "Sieg!" He called over his shoulder. "Come help me with the knight. His leg likely ain't good enough to walk on yet."

"I can walk."

Andre raised his brow, looking Lautrec over for a moment before shouting, "Nevermind." He nodded and pointed to his feet. "We're down on the first floor. It's going to be a hell of a descent on that leg of yours. Don't trip and break yer neck. Yer no good to me dead."

"I'll manage," Lautrec insisted, and the blacksmith nodded and left without another word.

Lautrec clambered to his feet using the wall beside him as support and shuffled around the edge of the room to the door, his leg throbbing but not screaming. He winced, took hold of the bars, and stepped outside, and for the second time, Lautrec had 'escaped' the Parish cell.

The descent was as the blacksmith warned: hell. Each time he had to set the foot of his bad leg down, a rod of pain ran from his heel to his hip, but by the time he'd reached the second floor of the Parish, his steps were coming quicker and less painful. By the time he was halfway to the ground level, he was almost moving at a normal pace.

The church was, not unexpectedly, the same as when he left it the first time all those days ago. Rows of shattered and warped pews greeted him nestled between the chipped and crumbling stone pillars that led up to the high ceiling, holes and rotted wooden planks poking out of every corner of it. The main hall was spacy, though, and a welcome change from the tight confines of the cell. He hobbled forth, the wall at his side to aid him, and stepped around to the alter at the church's head. Andre and Sieglinde were there, garnished in their traveling cloaks and leathers, and beside them Domhnall and Benjamin.

Ben turned to face him and for a moment he hardly recognized the boy he'd left behind a few days earlier. A dark and coarse beard had grown wild on the boy's face, and it almost made him look like a man. His eyes widened only slightly upon seeing Lautrec, then he swallowed, composed himself, and bowed. "Good to see you alive."

Domhnall turned to face him as well now, and a wide smile spread across the merchant's freckled face. "Aye siwmae," he greeted with a nod. "Seems our paths have crossed sooner than either of us had hoped, hm?"

He laughed.

Lautrec winced as he forced his bad leg up the shallow climb to the alter. Domhnall stook his hand out, and the man's good-natured smile seemed to force Lautrec's hand to find it and shake. When Lautrec turned to Ben, he saw that familiar look of hurt on the kid's face. The boy was still bitter about being left. Lautrec didn't really have any words for the kid, so he simply clapped him on the shoulder and turned to face Andre. "Everything I've told you has been a truth," he said, leaning beside a stone pillar to alleviate some pressure on his leg. "Now I expect the same courtesy."

Andre shared a look with Sieglinde, who gave a quiet nod of her head. The big blacksmith made his dog-noise again and set his hand upon a wooden bookshelf leaned up beside the wall. "We already told Dom and the boy... we didn't exactly leave Logan on good terms. Fled, I s'pose is a better word for what we did. Some... disturbing information came to light." He shoved on the bookshelf and it's bottom sliding along the floor filled the church's interior. "There are those who would call us kidnappers fer what we did, but we ain't no kidnappers. We saved them. Saved them all."

Lautrec, utterly perplexed, leaned forward to see what secrets the bookshelf held behind it. A hidden room was nestled into a cracked section of wall. Inside it, dimly aglow beneath torchlight, the face of a dozen little children, alert and wary, peered out at him. Some were dressed only in rags, their feet bare, and others didn't even have rags to cover their bodies; they nestled beneath heavy blankets. He spotted the two that had spied in on him in the cell, and saw all the children's faces were just as gaunt and dirty as theirs.

Lautrec spun on Andre, his face contorted with confusion. "What is this? You steal children?"

"We didn't steal them," Sieglinde piped up, stepping forth and opening her arms to her sides. "They were disappearing at the Archives! Little Garth told us that he saw his brother get taken away in the night by one of Logan's golems! That... that monster is doing something with them!"

Lautrec felt his stomach lurch. "I don't... understand."

"Logan is a madman," Andre said. "And anyone in his presence is at risk of his madness. Dom... I'm so sorry we didn't listen to you earlier."

The merchant rested his hand on Andre's shoulder and smiled. "It wasn't your fault, Andre. You saved who you could. That's what matters."

"So what then?" Lautrec said, his head spinning with the weight of this new information. "That's what you want me to do? That's your 'mission' for me? You expect me to be able to march up to the Archives and rescue the remaining children right out from under Logan's nose? What makes you

think I'm capable of such a thing?"

The blacksmith shook his head, his face dark and grim. "No. That ain't what we want. Yer no sneak, young man. Yer a knight. We want you to do what a knight does best..." He stepped forth and laid a meaty hand on Lautrec's shoulder.

"We want you to kill Logan."

Chapter 16

The world that Abby had come to clutched in the talons of the mighty crow at the Firelink Shrine had been one of decay and decadence, of crumbling buildings and tarnished stone walkways, of beasts and demons, and above all: of cold; a blistering, numbing, cold that encompassed and encapsulated every bit of Lordran, animate or inanimate. And so she had expected the same from the 'Duke's Archives' that Domhnall and the others had spoken of along her travels, but upon entering its main hall she found herself pleasantly and unexpectedly surprised. If the ruin that had stolen upon the rest of Lordran had laid siege here as well, the Archives were blissfully unaware of it. Stepping out from the long, arched, tunnel that wound its way into the main hall of the castle, Abby's face came alight as her eyes fell to the colorful banners that streamed from the lofty, stained glass, windows above, noting they were neither ripped nor shredded in not one stitch along their intricate fabrics. Polished bronze candelabras protruded from the walls at her side, hung beneath massive and beautiful paintings portraying distant landscapes and faraway vistas. Their flames were warm and bathed the entire hall in a soft, orange, light. Further on, an exotic velvet carpet of deep crimson and silver trim pooled on the floor beneath an enormous chandelier above; its rim layered with crystals and gems that twinkled and shone with every twist of its core. Tables and chairs, bookshelves and cupboards, were plentiful around the room's perimeter, and none of them were broken or warped or on the verge of collapse.

At the edges of the walls, and perhaps more wonderful than anything else, people were gathered. Not hollows nor demons nor beasts nor creatures. Humans like herself. Abby clutched her hands to her heart and looked upon them, drinking in the hopeful sight. The men and women there did not pay her much attention. Some were talking amongst each other, others were running blades on whetstones. A group of women at the rear of the hall were lined before a long table, kneading dough. A few men at the opposite wall were taking inventory of crossbow bolts and arrows. Abby could not remove the smile from her face. They're living, she thought, her heart soaring. They're just... living. Just then, a scatter of children came rushing through one of the halls many side paths, laughing and swatting at each other before disappearing around another. It's like back home at Vinheim, she realized. This is the world I need to see. I know now what I fight for. She turned to Quelana beside her and broadened her smile. "Isn't it wonderful?"

Quelana, shackled hand and foot at the men's requests, looked odd in such a lively environment; her face pale and littered with stressful lines of worry and uncertainty. She stepped closer to Abby, shying away from the pack of children as they rushed through the hall again, and clutched tightly to Abby's arm. What a fool I am, Abby realized with a sadness. This isn't her world. It's mine. Still, Quelana forced herself to return the smile

and nodded.. "Yes, Abby. It's... very nice."

"They won't hurt you," Abby assured her. "Some of my kind have a terribleness growing in their hearts, certainly, but many don't. Many are like Solaire and I."

"Oh, I know," Quelana said, still casting her wary glances around the room. "I've met enough humans in my day to know what you say is true. I've just... never seen so many of you in one place. It is... overwhelming."

"There are many more, my lady," Solaire cut in, stepping beside them. Abby was relieved to see him smiling as well. "This is why I tell you Logan is a good man. Look at what he has provided for the men and women of Lordran! Shelter and warmth and food and solace from... from the wickedness out there," he finished, pointing back the way they'd come.

"It's incredible," Abby said, lifting her head to stare up at the high, domed, ceiling above. "How is this castle in such good condition?"

"Maintenance, my lady," Solaire said. "The world out there has been abandoned, forgotten, but the world in here still lives on. And we take care of it."

Abby prodded the carpeting with the toe of her boot, watching as the frilly edge lifted and fell; she'd half been expecting it to be an illusion. A man with a dirty fall of brown hair and a patch covering one of his eyes fixed her with a strange look, bumped his friend's shoulder, and whispered something. Abby turned from them back to Solaire. "Do these men know who we are? Why we've come?"

"Not yet," Chester interrupted, stepping between the two of them. The man's top hat was slightly askew on his brow, and his dark eyes could be seen peering out from the jester's mask he wore over his face. "But this is as far as the rest of you go," he said to Solaire, sweeping his eyes over Quelana and the wolf at Abby's feet as well. "Logan only wants the girl."

Solaire's face reddened. "I intend to speak with Logan myself. It was my command over you treacherous lot that set out from this castle to retrieve our guests."

"I've spoken to Logan," the man with the bowl-shaped haircut, Petrus, interjected. "I've relayed him the story that Chester told us of your travels."

Solaire spun on the masked man, his brow furrowed, his fists clenched. "What lies have you spread!?"

Chester shrugged. "Twas you who led us out of these walls, sun warrior, that much is true, but it was me who returned to them first. I told no lies. I wouldn't dare to consider such a thing. Logan is my good friend, and all of our leader - both in mind and spirit. I gave him my report. What he

made of it is his own business."

Solaire was glowering, looking like a pot of boiling water ready to burst. He took a step towards Chester, but the knight of thorns, Kirk, was there in an instant. He lifted his barbed sword up to Solaire's chin and grinned. "Be a real shame for you to throw your life away after coming so far, knight, wouldn't it?"

The wolf at her heels began growling into its muzzle. Abby lowered to a knee and stroked its fur as she lifted her eyes to the knight. "It's alright, Solaire. I am not afraid of this Logan. It's up to you, however, to watch over Quelana and our furry friend here," she said, scratching the wolf behind the ear until the beast calmed. She held her palm to its neck and felt her hand grow warm. The wolf's eyes grew heavy and the beast lowered itself to the carpeting to curl into a ball.

"My lady, it is not that I worry about leaving you with Logan alone," Solaire explained. "It is simply the fact that he would request such strange terms in the first place that raises my suspicions."

"I tire of this," Chester said, shouldering past Solaire and offering his hand to Abby. "Come, girl. I'm to take you to him. I won't bite... much." He snickered beneath his mask.

Abby looked at the man's gloved hand, took a breath, and laid her own within it. He gripped her delicately and bowed.

"If any harm should befall her in your presence..." Solaire growled.

"Save your threats, knight," Kirk said, stepping to the side so Solaire's path was blocked from Abby and Chester. "In case you haven't noticed, you ain't Logan's lapdog no more," he said, nodding to Petrus behind them. "He is. That means if you step out of line... well, I think you know the rest," the tall man in the dark armor said, a baleful menace to his voice. He tapped his barbed sword off his armored thigh.

"Don't think the good men and women of this castle won't find out about what you did, knight of thorns," Solaire told the man. "Poor Siegmeyer..."

"Abby," Quelana whispered at her side, and Abby turned to see the witch looking more anxious then ever. Quelana reached out to her, but the shackles ran out of slack before she could, snapping her hands back abruptly.

Abby stepped forward and took both of Quelana's hands in her own, rubbing her fingers into the witch's palms. "Solaire will protect you until I return."

"I don't worry for me," Quelana said quietly. "I worry for you." "Come, girl," Chester repeated. "My patience wears thin."

"Logan won't harm her," Solaire told Quelana. "You have my word, my lady."

Quelana sighed, held her emerald eyes on Abby for a moment, and released her hands. Abby stroked her hair, nodded, and turned to find Chester with his elbow extended. She looked from his arm to his mask. The man bowed his head towards his elbow and she had no other choice but to take it in her own. They walked from the main hall like that, arm- in-arm, the way the boys used to walk the girls onto the ballroom floor at Vinheim's Dragon School, and Abby took one last glance at her companions before they disappeared around a corner. Solaire had moved beside Quelana, the wolf between the two of them. The knight bowed, the wolf slept, and Quelana stared on, a look of deep worry wrinkling her brow. Then Chester led her around the corner and they were gone.

The man in the top hat walked her up a short flight of stairs, Abby gawking at the decorated wooden banners and polished oak armoires that flanked the smaller room, and onto a wide, wooden, platform, trimmed with rows of ornate, carved, ivory that acted as a railing to keep them within. She was just getting ready to ask what the strange platform was when it came to life, the sudden lift of its elevator pulley-system nearly causing her to lose her footing til Chester tightened his arm around hers and stilled her. Her balance restored, she lifted her head and watched as row after row of stone walls descended around them as the lift carried them upwards. After a few seconds, and no end in sight, she turned to Chester and asked, "How high up is this castle?"

The masked man turned on her, his eyes flicking her way between the eye slits. "High," he answered and said no more.

After a long climb, the lift finally slowed to a halt in a encased, stone, chamber. An identical room like the one below awaited them outside the platform's rail, but when they passed through it, they came upon an enormous hall. "Oh my," Abby exclaimed, her brow lifting in delight. It was a library, not unlike the one they had at school, but much, much, larger. Every inch of every wall was lined with bookshelves, and every shelf was brimming with books; leather-bound and an assortment of colors: blue, red, grey, black. When she was younger, and before all her time was taken up by her failed training at sorceries and miracles, she would have been in blissful elation to come upon such a wealth of treasure. "There's so many..." she whispered as Chester walked her beneath a tunnel and out into yet another section of the library. She leaned out over the railing to see floors both above and below them. "When I save Lordran... there will be enough books for every hand of every boy and every girl in Lordran to hold."

Chester turned to her, cocking his head sideways. "You're a strange little thing, aren't you?"

"Why do you say that?" Abby asked. "Haven't you ever read a book? There

are few things as wonderful as a good story."

Chester took a sudden turn, pulling her out of the library and out onto the ledge of a balcony that wrapped the castle's outer walls. Abby looked down, but night had set in, and only darkness could be seen. The air was chilly out here, though, and snow caked the balcony's floor so she was careful to clutch to the man's arm to keep her footing. "If it were up to me," Chester said, relentless in his brisk walking pace. "We'd have ourselves a mighty good fire with all those books."

Abby frowned. "That's a terrible thing to say."

He shrugged. "Call my crazy, but Id rather be warm then well-read."

"Why do you wear a mask?" Abby asked, though she knew the question was rather tangential. She had been looking at it, and the question simply came to her.

Chester snickered. "We all wear a mask, girl. I just make mine more easily visible," he said, then after a moment's silence, "And you'd better think about what mask you wear with Logan. The man has a shrewd eye. It won't be easy to lie to him."

"Why would I lie?" Abby asked. "I have nothing to hide."

"What a wonderfully honest little life you must live," Chester said, a sardonic sting to his words. "Maybe you could teach the rest of us how to be so wonderful if you decide to stay."

"I won't be staying," Abby answered immediately. "And you're making fun of me. I don't appreciate it."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to upset the 'savior of Lordran', would I?"

"I told you stop it. I am going to save Lordran. I won't stop until I do."

He halted so abruptly, she nearly slipped in the snow. When she opened her mouth to scold him for as much, he pressed her against the cold stone wall of the castle and held her there with his arm against her chest. "What are you doing!?" She snapped.

Chester reached his hand beneath the chin of his mask and peeled it away. From the torchlight a bit further along the path and the moon's pale glow in the sky above, she had enough light to glimpse the man's face. It was comely; almost queerly so. His long hair fell in soft ringlets around it, like hers once did, and his features were sharp, lips thin, and eyes dark and mysterious. His handsomeness was comparable to Lautrec's, but where Lautrec had the hard features of a man, Chester had the softer features of a feminine face. His dark eyes bore into her as he spoke, "I can be good to you girl. If Logan does convince you to stay, that is. There are men here that will seek to harm you or use you, but I would protect you. I

would keep your bed warm at night, and my crossbow would watch over you in the day. Your hair is all chopped up like a boy's, but you're a very pretty girl, and you have a sweetness to you that I haven't seen in a long time. I like sweet things."

Abby swallowed. "Please unhand me," she stammered, squirming uncomfortably beneath his arm.

He smiled, making his comely face even more so. "It's something to think about. Surely you've thought of men before?" He asked, cocking his head to the side and examining her face. "You've still got your maidenhood, don't you?"

"Please release me," Abby insisted. "You're frightening me."

He did, but the disappointment was evident on his face before it vanished beneath his mask again. "There may come a day when you long for a man like me at your side. Perhaps I'll still be there when you do..."

Abby took a breath to still her racing heart. She wrapped her arms around her torso to shield the cold winds dusting the balcony and said no more, choosing instead to simply wait for the man to continue walking. He snickered, shook his head, and headed back the way they'd come from. "Hey!" She called. "What are you doing?"

"He wants you alone," Chester said casually over his shoulder as he sauntered away. "The prison door's a bit further on. Good luck, girl. Keep my offer in mind."

"Prison?" She echoed, turning to the balcony path where two sconces held torches flanking an indentation in the castle wall. "His chambers are in a prison?"

But by then, Chester was already gone.

The doors, for as large and imposing as they were, came apart easily enough. They creaked on their hinges, and Abby noted that the noise did not echo into the chamber beyond, it sounded flat and odd, as if she were opening a portal to another world. When she stepped through the doors, the tower within may as well have been another world. It was the most massive interior she'd ever seen. The walls were rounded, like a giant cylinder stuck into the earth, and when she stepped hesitantly to a ladder at her feet and peered down, the drop to the ground level below was so maddeningly steep, she nearly collapsed. Her hand found the stone barrier, though, and she took a moment to catch her breath and await her spinning head to return to normal. Any now I must climb down this, she thought bitterly. What kind of man would make such a place his home?

She cleared her mind, gathered her courage, and lowered to her knees to swing her legs out and plant her feet on the upper rungs of the ladder. She found footing and wormed backwards until her hands caught the

ladder as well. Steady, she reminded herself as she took the first, shaky, step downwards. Like Quelana instructed me with pyromancy. Focus on the movement, not the result. She descended further and the door she'd come from disappeared above her eyeline, only the ladder and the distant wall behind it visible now. She had managed three more steps before her boot, the sole still caked with snow from the balcony, slipped off the rung. Abby yelped, but when she moved to regain her footing, her other boot slipped with it. All her weight crashed downwards, and if her hands hadn't been locked around the ladder's sides, she would have crashed to her demise right there. Despite her panic, a thought came to her mind that made a queer laughter spill from her mouth. A fitting end for the Chosen Undead who's to save Lordran. Death by ladder. Her laughter did not echo, and the strangeness of that lack of sound pulled her back to reality. She pressed her body to the ladder and stilled her kicking legs long enough to plant her boots back on the rungs before them.

Abby took a deep breath and squeezed her eyelids shut. Thinking ahead, she bit her lip and worked the toe of one boot atop the heel of the other and wrestled it loose until she could kick it free from her foot. She repeated the process on the other boot until that one as well was sailing away from the ladder as well. Barefoot, she felt much more comfortable descending the ladder, and after a few slip-free steps down the rungs, she began to move at a reasonable pace.

Her feet pressed to the cold stone floor beneath the ladder and Abby sighed, the burden and tension of the climb slipping from her shoulders like the removal of a heavy cloak. She released the ladder, noting how white her knuckles had grown around it, and looked for her boots, but they were nowhere to be found. Oh no, she realized, stepping to the edge of the platform she was on. I kicked my boots at him. That's not a good way to make a first impression. She peered over the raised barrier, but the dizzying spiral that awaited her made her immediately pull her head back. There was nothing left to do, she supposed, but walk. So she walked.

A great set of stone stairs wrapped the curved walls of the tower, and Abby moved carefully down them, watching her footing so as to not misstep on a jagged edge of stone and cut her feet. Beside her, she was amazed to see even more bookshelves were set into the walls, occasionally broken up by a small prison cell, though none housed any prisoners. As she climbed further and further down, peculiar sounds began booming from the lower level, again lacking any sort of echo off the tower's cylindrical wall. Abby felt she had worked up enough courage to steal a glance over the edge again, and so she did. Below, she could see she was rapidly approaching the ground level, and nearly stopped dead when she saw what awaited her.

Golems, she realized, eyeing the hulking blue monstrosities that littered the bottom of the prison. It is as Domhnall said. He lives with golems! The large creatures were lumbering around in an unorganized way. Abby

counted nine of them in total. Their enormous feet thundered into the ground upon every step, and the torchlight that kept the tower from darkness glowed off their peculiar metallic skin in strange ways, turning them orange one moment, blue the next, and a mix of both the next. Some carried what looked like large wooden wheels between their arms, others held great iron poles and notched sheets of metal. They were all working in their own way around the central piece of the prison: a towering assemblage of shafts and wheels and metals and woods. A machine? Abby wondered. They are assembling some great machine. She saw, however, that even the golems themselves were unsure of how to piece the thing together. She watched as one tried sticking an iron pole between two wooden cogs, but it didn't fit and the creature grumbled and moved around to the other side to try sticking it elsewhere.

Abby found the sight bizarre and disconcerting, but both Domhnall and Solaire had previously mentioned that the golems were completely in Logan's control, so she walked on, and before she knew it, the spiraling staircase had come to its end, and Abby's feet fell upon the ground level. She could feel the golem's footfalls shaking the stone tiles beneath her as she stepped gingerly around an enormous pillar to stand amongst them.

"Hello?" Her voice called into the chamber so softly and timidly, she would have doubted anyone could possibly have heard it, but all at once, all nine of the golems stopped dead in their tracks and turned their eyeless headed in her direction. Run, a voice shouted in her head, but she made her feet stay planted.

"Abby...?" A deep voice called from the back of the tower, where a stack of books and papers were mounted high atop a wooden table.

Abby found it strange that someone she'd never met was already calling her by her name, but she resisted her trepidation and called back to it," Yes."

He appeared, lumbering around the stack of papers on his desk almost as clumsily as the golems, and nearly tripped over a spill of parchments and ledgers. He caught himself on the edge of the desk, lowered his head, and a high-pitched laughter rumbled from beneath his enormous hat. He muttered something to himself, but the only word Abby could make out was "Time". This is their leader? She wondered. She'd been expecting... well, something else. The man before her was garnished not in lavish, elegant, robes, but a dingy, dirty, cloak that might have been fit for a beggar back home at Vinheim. His hat was certainly as big as Domhnall had described it to her, but even that looked old and haggard and worn down around the edges. When he stilled his laughter and lifted his head to continue his approach, she could see the wrinkled, leathery, surface of his face was cracked with a smile beneath the brim of his hat; a tangle of silvery, dry, hair falling around his brow that might have once been blond, but was now quickly growing to grey. Closer he grew still, and Abby saw his nose was a big, crooked, thing that dominated his face. He lifted it to

her and smiled, and somehow that smile returned twenty years youth to his age and his eyes took on an exuberant sparkle. "Ah," he swooned, sticking his hand out. "As beautiful as sunshine. You're mere presence has brightened my day, sweet girl," he said, and when Abby took his hand to shake, he lowered his mouth to it and kissed.

"T-thank you. You are... very kind, sir," Abby replied, unsure of how to respond. Logan stood straight once more and set his eyes upon her, staring in silence for a long time til Abby grew uncomfortable and said, "I may have accidentally tossed my boots down here."

"Oh?" He questioned, looking from her face to her feet and sounding that queer laughter from his mouth once more. He lifted his head to the ceiling and stroked at his chin. "So you did."

Abby watched him, nonplussed, and forced herself to continue. "Um, should I look for-"

"Would you like a drink?" He asked, cutting her off.

"A... drink?"

"Yes, yes, yes," Logan said, clasping his hands together. Apparently he'd taken her confused words as some sort of acceptance. "Come, come. This way. Right over here."

He turned and lumbered back towards his desk, and Abby had no choice but to follow, lest she be left in the golems' company alone. The man disappeared behind a stack of books that had been sloppily tossed in a heap on the floor and Abby walked before his desk, clearing a bundle of scrolls from a chair there and seating herself. She noted the extraordinary amount of candles the man had left burning both atop the desk and all around it, and found it a near miracle that he hadn't caught fire to the whole thing yet. Or perhaps he already has, she thought, folding her hands on her lap and waiting for his return.

When he came back, a skin of wine was in his hand, two bronze chalices in the other, and he moved to the big chair behind his desk and seated himself. His robed arm came up and swatted a clearing from the desk's top, books and scrolls flung carelessly to the floor, and set the chalices down between them. He looked at her and smiled a toothy smile before twisting the wineskin loose and filling the cups. He pushed one to her and took the other for himself. "To your journey," he saluted, raising his cup. "I've heard its been quite the endeavor making it here."

"Yes," she said, lifting the cup to peer at the dark, crimson, contents within. "I've never really had wine before..."

"Never really had it, or never had it. There is a bit of a difference there, Abby, isn't there?"

"I've never drank wine," she said, clarifying.

"Ah, until now," he said with a smile. "It's an incredible thing to watch a person's first foray into something new, to watch a mind work as its doused with a fresh coat of wonder and curiosity. A plunge into unexplored territory that can hold both all the world's wonders as well as all of its agony and despair. To which path will the wine lead you one, Abby? Drink and let us see." He lifted his cup to his lips and nodded, urging her to do the same.

She rested the cup's brim on her bottom lip and, after a moment's hesitation, poured some of the stuff into her mouth and swallowed. Her face scrunched up; it was bitter and dry and she wondered how men could ever spend so many hours drinking away at such a thing. She set the cup back to the desk and shook her head. "It's... not for me."

Logan hadn't drank. His cup was still resting on his lips. He took it away and stared at her, and somehow it looked as if his whole face had changed. The smile was gone from his mouth, and his eyes bore into her with such intensity, she felt the urge to run again stir in her stomach. "You know," he said, his voice quiet and somber, "the last guest I had down here had a drink, too. I told her it was wine, but do you know what it really was? Poison."

Abby's whole body tensed. The hand holding her cup began to shake. She looked from it up to Logan and her eyes grew wide. Her stomach lurched. Her skin felt hot, itchy: like it wanted to crawl away from her bones. You should've ran, that voice yelled at her again. You've could've lived.

Logan's smile returned. "But that was the last guest. I only gave you wine, Abby. Do you think me a monster?"

Her heart was still thundering so loud in her chest, his words sounded distant. She forced herself to take a breath and steady her shaking hand. "That was a cruel thing to do..." she managed to croak from her dry throat.

"Yes, unfortunately, it was," Logan admitted. "I apologize. Sometimes these cruel tricks us humans play are the only way to pry into each other's minds though, you see? Now look at the information we have mined from a sip of wine and a few simple words. We know you value your life, that you are far too trusting, and that, of course, you think I am a man capable of casual, cold-blooded, murder. All of that from a little cruel trick that lasted not but ten seconds and was done with - no true harm befell either of us."

"You could've asked me those things," Abby said, and felt tears ready to surface beneath her eyes. No, she demanded of herself. You will not cry before this man so easily. She took a breath and composed herself.

"I could have," Logan admitted, bringing his long fingers together before

him on his desk, "but, again, humans have a way of... manipulating each other. Even the sweetest ones, like you, do it. We're liars, you see, and sometimes the truths have to be taken from us instead of offered. Do you understand?"

"No!" Abby said, her voice raising. "I wouldn't have lied to you!"

Logan smiled. "You're a sweet thing. Too trusting, though. You saw an old man with a big smile and a clumsy step and you put your life in his hands not one minute after meeting him. Do you know what that says about you, sweet Abby?"

She only glared at him.

"You aren't ready to go venturing out into the world on some grandiose quest of salvation."

"Is that why you did that?" Abby asked. "Because Chester told you what I'm doing?"

"He told me what you might yet do, yes," Logan admitted. "And I would like to talk you out of it. I won't hide my intentions."

She could still recall the forest dream. It had been so clear, so vivid, that she was nearly convinced it hadn't been a dream at all, but some prophetic glimpse of the future, of an army of hollowed soldiers and great beasts at her command, keeping vigil over her as she trekked across the hazards of Lordran, filling the Lordvessel with the souls of those who would see the world to darkness, marching on the Kiln of the First Flame, and reigniting the fires that would spark the world back to life. When she narrowed her eyes on Logan once again, she was filled with a confidence she hadn't had since entering the prison. "I will not change my course," she told him. "It is my destiny to save Lordran. I won't turn away from it."

"A noble quest, for sure," Logan admitted. "But one based around a deception far crueler than the little one I just pulled."

"There is no deception," Abby told him. "I will save Lordran."

"Will you save it because you choose to?" Logan questioned. "Because if your simply acting out of some predetermined fate of yours, you're not a hero at all, are you? Just a plaything to be used and discarded when your task is complete."

"Of course I'm choosing to," Abby said. "I'm choosing right now not to let you talk me out of it."

"You think you're making a choice." "I am," she insisted.

Logan stared at her then, his dark eyes narrowed above his beak of a nose. He tapped his slender fingers together on his desk and a smile crept up his thin lips. "Ah, I've found your boots," he said, bent below his desk, and came up with them dangling from his hand. He plopped them on the desk between them.

Another game, Abby thought angrily. She reached out for them, but Logan pulled them away at the last moment. "Why-"

"I'll play you for them," he told her. "After all, you did throw them down here. In a way they belong to me. But I'm a fair man. A game. If you win, the boots are yours. If you lose... perhaps you will listen to what I have to say?"

"I don't want to play another game!" Abby pleaded, reaching for her boots again only to have them plucked away.

Logan laughed and set them beside him on a stack of books. He pulled a candle free from its holster, gripped the bottom of it, and snapped off a chunk of wax before setting it back down. He held the wax up clearly so she could see it and then closed his fist around it. His arms disappeared behind his back, and when they came back, both fists were closed tight. "A simple game, Abby. One hand has the wax, one hand has nothing. Pick the right one and your boots return to you."

Abby squinted. "What cruel trick are you playing now?" "Choose," he insisted, shaking each of his fists.

Abby sighed, looked between them, and begrudgingly pointed to his left hand.

He opened it. It was empty. "The boots are mine," Logan said with a laugh. "But, as I said, I'm a fair man. Let's play again." He closed his fist, brought his hands behind him, and returned them to the table. "Try harder this time?"

"Harder!?" Abby snapped. "It's just a dumb game of chance! What does it matter how hard I try?"

Logan shrugged. "Then choose."

Again, her eyes darted between them looking for some subtle difference. "I don't know... the left again," she told him impatiently.

He opened his palm. It was empty. "Wrong again, Abby. Aren't you suppose to be the 'Chosen Undead'?" Logan taunted with a laugh.

"If you continue this cruelty, I'll leave," Abby warned, though the prospect of marching through that chamber of golems frightened her.

"Once more," Logan said, "and we'll never play this game again. This time, I want you to really think about which hand you choose. If you truly are the Chosen Undead, you can not fail this. If you choose the empty hand again... your status is a farce." His hands vanished and returned a third time.

Abby took a deep breath and looked between the man's fists. She forced herself to relax and let her mind ease. Your instincts, she thought. Just like with pyromancy. Just like when you calmed the Taurus Demon. Trust your instincts. She closed her eyes a moment, and when she opened them, they were on his left hand again. "Left," she said.

Logan's mouth fell agape. His left fist opened and the chunk of candle rolled out from within.

Abby breathed a sigh of relief. "There," she said proudly and stuck her hand out for her boots. "Do you believe me now?"

Logan blew a breath through pursed lips, shook his head, and took up her boots. Just as they came into her reach, though, he yanked them away once again. His mouth closed and spread into a grin. He nodded to his right hand, and when it opened, a second chunk of candle rolled out from within.

Abby watched as it rolled across the table at her and slowed to a halt beside the first chunk. She frowned. "It was a trick all along! You said-"

"Words are easy to conjure," Logan cut her off. "And this lesson was even more important than the first, Abby. There was nothing in my hands the first two times you chose. The last time, both hands were filled. Do you know why?"

"Because you're a cruel old man," Abby said, surprised at just how angry he'd made her.

"Because I gave you the illusion of choice," Logan went on, oblivious to the insult. "I presented you with two roads, and every time you took one you were convinced it was of your choosing, but it was me who decided where they ended. By the third time, you were so desperate to convince both yourself and I that you were 'special', you really believed you had some mental power to see inside my hand? Abby... do you understand how ridiculous that is?"

"I-..." Abby stammered. Don't cry before this man. Please don't cry.

"Lordran has shown you two closed hands and convinced you that by picking one or the other, you are making some choice to save it," Logan said, standing from his chair. "Abby... you traveled with the knight of Carim, Lautrec, did you not?"

She lifted her head. "How-? How do you know that?"

Logan smiled and stepped around the desk to move nearer to her. "Lautrec... works for me. In a way."

"What?"

"Admittedly, he may not be completely aware that he works for me, but he does," Logan went on, sitting on his desk, hovering above her. "Both he and I are working very tirelessly to accomplish the same task. Do you know what that task is?"

Lautrec had spoken briefly of it, and so Abby knew very little. "Lautrec... said he wanted to break some cycle."

"Yes," Logan said. "A cycle that has gone on for a very, very, long time. A cycle that this world of ours is now very, very, desperate to see continue. A cycle that ensures its existence. A cycle that ensures all those hollowed warriors and all those snarling beasts and all those wicked demons out there continue to live on - to survive - and to torment all of us... endlessly."

Abby shook her head. "I know what you're getting at. You don't want me to light the bonfire. You don't want Lordran to be saved! If I don't light that fire, the world ends!"

"And what more is an 'end' than a chance for a new beginning?" Logan asked, leaning forward so his beak of a nose was hovering only a foot from Abby's face. "Abby, what do you think will happen when Gwyn finally breathes his last breath? Do you really believe things will just... stop?"

Abby swallowed, she hadn't though about it much. "I... the world will grow dark. Cold. It's happening right now! Look outside your castle walls!"

"'And from the darkness a great light will stir'," Logan said, lifting his eyes to the impossibly high ceiling above. "We won't perish, Abby. We will live on. And the world? The world will be free from the shackles of time that bind it." He returned his gaze to her. "If you light that fire... you will be playing right into every wicked creature that inhabits this world's hand. You will restart a cycle that has enslaved humanity for an eternity."

"But the world will live!" Abby snapped back. "The people-"

"-will return to their chains until the next 'Chosen' comes and resets them all again. Forever." Logan lowered his head and a sadness came across his face. "I won't imprison you, Abby, though I easily could. But I know that if you leave her... and you go to your 'hollow army' in Anor Londo... they will see you to Gwyn, alright. They will take you as a slave and force your hand to light the fire that will ensure their existence. It is... all they are concerned with. You are nothing to them. A tool. A tool to be used and discarded."

Abby looked to her hands and as she stared at them, such a deep sadness

stole over her, she could no longer hold the tears from her eyes. They raced, warm and soft, down her cheek and dropped from her chin. "There's no other way," she croaked, avoiding looking at the man before her. "It is the 'cycle'... or it is the end."

Logan lowered himself to a knee before her and took up her hands in his own. When she lifted her face to him, he pressed a kerchief to her cheek and gently rubbed the tears away. He smiled. "Perhaps not," he said. "Abby... where are we?"

She sniffled. "Lordran."  
"No. Here. Where is this?" He asked, looking around them. "A prison."

"Mmm, yes," he agreed. "A prison... but also a library. Strange, isn't that? For the two to be as one? So close together. All the world's information... and the shackles to bind it. Abby, are you a pious young lady?"

Abby shrugged. "My parents didn't care much for Gods. I've never had the faith to cast miracles, either, so... I suppose not."

Logan nodded. "I've spent many a lifetimes reading books. Gathering knowledge. I know all about Gods. We've gotten them wrong, though, Abby. They aren't what we thought they were."

She frowned. "I don't understand."

Logan turned to look at his desk. He found a small, bronze, scale there and scooped it up in his hand. "You see this scale? If I create this, if I mine the bronze, smelter it, form it, give it its shape and its purpose, I am its creator. Yet if I hand this to you," he said, placing the scale on her lap. "You control it. You decided what it does within the confines I've set. You decided to keep it or destroy it or smash it to bits, but at the end of the day it was I who created it, and you who played with it."

"Yes," Abby said, setting the scale back on his desk. "I understand that."

"And so is the way of the world," Logan explained. "The creators, our creators, crafted this wonderful, vast, world for us to inhabit. They are the benevolent forces behind which all things came to be. Their intellect and their passion; their drive and their skill... it sculpted this world of ours from nothing and made it into something!"

For the first time in a long time, Abby felt a smile come across her face.

"Gods are the other things," Logan said dryly, looking up again with a flash of utter contempt crossing his face. "They are the ones that inhabit this world now. They are the ones responsible for its endless cycling. They are the ones who cruelly beat us and kills us and steal from us all only for

their own entertainment!"

Abby shook her head. "No... nothing could be that cruel."

"And yet they are. The creators left all of this information to us, Abby, here in these very walls," Logan went on. "I've read it! Time and time again, my inferior mind desperately trying to make sense of the words until finally, one day, one lifetime, I did, and everything clicked! Our creators are wonderful, Abby, but they have abandoned us! ...only the Gods remain now, and they are growing increasingly more cruel as they tire and bore of our lives."

"Why!?" She pleaded. "Why would the creators abandon us?"

Logan shrugged. "To move on to their next creation, I suppose. And the worst part is that one day even the Gods will forget us. Then we are truly abandoned... truly alone."

"Then you think us doomed to a fate of darkness," Abby said, trying desperately to not let the thoughts overwhelm her, lest her heart break to pieces.

Logan smiled. "No." He stood, lifting her up with him by the hand. He led them around a stack of books towards the center of the chamber once more, where the lumbering crystal golems were still hard at work trying to piece their mechanical puzzle together. Logan pulled her along beside him as he began to circle the machine. "The creators are not cruel, Abby. They are wonderful, not cruel. They left us a way to combat the darkness... to move on when all around us should fail. Do you know what this machine is?"

Abby looked at the cogs and the wheels and the levers and the bars protruding from every angle of the thing and couldn't even fathom a guess. "No," she admitted.

"Neither do I," Logan said, but his smile did not waver. "Neither does any man, women, or child in Lordran. I've read just about every book in this castle, every scrap of information the creators left us behind, and do you know what they say about this mechanism?"

Abby shrugged.

"Nothing!" He cheered so loudly, the golems halted their work and turned their way.

"I don't... understand," Abby said.

"Why would they do it, Abby?" Logan asked. "Why would the Gods leave a massive, mechanical, contraption here like this? A massive, mechanical, contraption that is incomplete nonetheless!? An incomplete machine beneath Lordran's largest and most abundant library, its biggest wealth of

knowledge and information, and not leave a scrap of information about it? Can't you see the madness in that!?" His voice had slowly been rising a crescendo, and was now at a scream. He calmed himself with a breath and went on. "And all of this... at the heart of a massive prison. Bars on the walls. Locks on the doors. Almost taunting us with our confines. A final hint... at what they want from us."

"The creators... you think they want us to do something?"

Logan nodded, a mad glint had come to his eyes. "What more could a creator want than to see its creations strive? To watch them break free of the confines they bestowed upon them? To become something more than mere tools for the Gods to tinker with or simple, mindless, insects to scurry about from place to place without purpose?" He laughed that queer laughter of his and grabbed her by the shoulders so she had to face him. "Abby... I'm going to complete the machine the creators left us. I'm going to piece it together and turn it on. I am going to accomplish what the very beings who crafted this world of ours have always known one of us could." His head threw back and his laughter rumbled up into the tower. It's echoing, she realized as a chill ran her spine, his laughter echoes where no other sound does. "I'm going to do it, Abby, and all I ask is that you give me the time to. I'm going to finish the machine.

"I'm going to break the cycle!"

Chapter 17

When the lift finally returned from the upper levels of the castle, the mechanical cogs grinding away beneath the weight of the wooden platform that lowered, it was not Abby who rode down, it was the masked crossbowmen, Chester, and he was alone. It's been so long, Quelana thought, climbing to her feet as the muzzled wolf beside her rose as well. They've done something with her. She turned to Solaire, who had been doing his best to ignore Kirk's taunts and threats as they waited, and had seated himself at the far end of the room beside an armoire. The knight stood and Quelana saw his hand grasp for a straight sword that was not in its hilt: it had been forfeit to the large man in the black chainmail, Petrus, upon their arrival. It was that large man now that strode forth to meet Chester. The men came together, exchanged quiet words, and Quelana saw a scroll of paper pass from the crossbowmen's hands to the plump one's. He unrolled it, read, and exchanged another quick hush of words with Chester before turning back to the group; his heavy cheeks red and his brow furrowed.

"Remove the witch's chains," he said, "Arm the Warrior of the Sun. Logan's orders."

As comforting as the man's words rang in her ears, Quelana ignored them and stepped forth. "Where is Abby?"

Petrus' frown deepened. "Does the girl lead this... fellowship of yours?" He asked, his eyes sweeping from her to the wolf, Solaire, and back.

Quelana hadn't considered it. Lautrec had been the closest thing they'd had to a 'leader'. But he was gone, and she was a coward, so it had to be Abby or Solaire.

"She does," Solaire answered for her, striding across the room and plucking his sword back from Laurentius' grip. The pyromancer gave it up without hesitation, but the man's eyes fell to Quelana and studied her peculiarly - as he had done since discovering she was a witch. Solaire smiled at the blade, as if reunited with a forlorn old friend and turned back to Petrus. "Why do you ask that?"

"Because she is staying," Chester interjected, folding his arms across his chest.

"Staying?" Quelana echoed.

"That's right," the masked man said, sauntering across the room towards her. She recoiled as he neared, but he reached forth and snatched up her manacled wrists before she could escape him. He plugged them with a key and set her loose. "She's a smarter girl than you likely give her credit for."

"And Abby made this decision," Solaire questioned with a raised brow, "of her own accord?"

"According to this," Petrus said, slapping his meaty knuckles off the scroll of paper Chester had handed him.

Quelana wasn't sure what to make of their words just yet, but figured she'd be unlikely to receive any more answers-at least not yet-and so she held her tongue, awaited until her chains were completely removed, and knelt to free the wolf's snout from its muzzle.

"Not that," Chester stopped her, grabbing her wrist and yanking it away. "That thing goes with Petrus," and when Quelana opened her mouth to protest him, he added, "the girl knows of this as well. She's agreed to it."

"And what happens to the rest of us?" Quelana asked.  
"You're to be shown the guest quarters," Chester answered.  
"I want to see Abby."  
"She's tired."  
"I want to see her," Quelana insisted.  
The masked man cocked his head to the side. "...does she care about you?"

"Yes," Quelana answered immediately, and she felt it was a truth. She'd developed a bond with the young woman, and one way or another, she felt their paths were now locked on the same course until... until the end.

Chester nodded. "Then I shall deliver you." He faced Solaire. "But Logan wants no further interruptions, knight. Don't go wandering down to bother him with your nonsense."

Solaire's face reddened. "You call it nonsense only because you know I intend to bring up the treason you and your friends acted out against both the mission and myself, and the murder your pal over there committed in cold blood!" He shouted, shoving an accusatory finger in the knight of thorns' direction.

Kirk snorted derisive laughter, but did not deny the claim.

"No, I say this because it's true. Logan expended a great deal of energy convincing our new guest to stay," Chester said, "and he's not looking for any further conversation tonight. Do not disturb him."

"I will not take order from-"

"That's Logan's order. Not mine," Chester told him. "Any further protests and you can spend the night in a cell."

Solaire stood a moment longer, his hand balled to a fist at his chest, his mouth moving up and down looking for words that did not come. After a moment, his shoulders slumped, as if the air had been deflated from his armor, and he looked from Chester to Quelana. "Do you require my protection, my lady?"

I'm not sure what I require, Quelana thought, but I doubt it lies within these walls. She forced a smile and shook her head. "No. Thank you."

Solaire sighed, bowed to her, and fixed Chester with one, last, baleful, look before turning on his heel and disappearing into one of the room's side paths. Petrus lumbered over to the wolf and fixed a collar around the beast's thick neck. The wolf emitted a low growl from the depths of his throat, like the ominous rumble of an oncoming storm, but did not fight the man, and soon enough he was dragging the beast behind him around a different passage. Kirk, Laurentius, and Chester were the only ones left with her, and they soon crowded around her.

Kirk sneered and pointed a grubby finger in her direction. "The witch is all alone. You know... she don't look so scary without her friends."

Quelana lifted her hand, raised two fingers in the man's direction, and let a stream of liquidy fire spit from her fingertips. She commanded them just close enough to singe the loose frizzes of hair near his shoulder. Kirk backstepped and cursed her, but Laurentius moved between them. "He didn't mean anything by that, Daughter of Chaos," he assured her in his quiet, wormy, voice. "Perhaps... perhaps you'd allow me to see you to your quarters?" He asked, a hopeful raise of his brow accompanying the question. "I know the castle well. I could show it to you. We could discuss- "

"No," she said definitively, putting an end to his ramble.

Kirk's mirthless laugh came from behind the man's shoulder. "Fire bitch don't like you, Laur," he said.

Laurentius gave her a wounded look, but said no more.

"Come," Chester said, offering his hand. "Let us escape the presence of these savages."

"Coming from the king savage, that means a lot, old friend," Kirk said and clapped the crossbowmen on the shoulder before leading Laurentius off around a bend in the wall.

Alone, Chester nodded to his extended hand, urging Quelana to take hold of it. She gave the masked man a shrewd look before marching past him, keeping her hands decidedly away from his to accentuate her disdain of him. She crossed to the lift and stepped warily onto its wooden footing. The lifts in Blighttown were far more frightening, and far more large, than this one, but their path was visible from top to bottom, not hidden

away, burrowed within castle walls, like this contraption. It made her uneasy, and when Chester joined her and pulled the lever to get the thing going, they slipped up into a tight fit of carved stone that pressed in all around them, the platform beneath her feet rumbling and shaking as it ascended. She took a breath and laid her hand upon the railing to steady herself.

After a few moments of silence, only the steady whirrrr of the lift's mechanism filling the tight chamber, Chester turned on her and asked, "What is she interested in?"

The question seemed so abruptly asinine, she barely comprehended the words. "What?"

"Abby," Chester clarified, "You traveled alongside her for days. Surely you learned of some of the girl's interests, no?"

Quelana frowned. "What business of that is yours?"

Chester's dark eyes peered out from beneath his mask, and, though she couldn't see, Quelana got the distinct impression he was grinning under there. "Only a curiosity."

"Well keep your curiosity away from Abby," Quelana snapped. "She's a sweet girl and you're a terrible beast of a man."

Chester lifted his hands, as if to feign injury. "Me? And what exactly have I done to be admonished so truculently?"

"Don't play the fool with me. If you had your way back on the bridge where we first encountered you..."

"I wouldn't have touched the girl," Chester answered, without hearing the rest of her accusation. "If I recall correctly, I believe it was my large, thorny, friend who was making all the threats."

"You did nothing to stop him," Quelana snapped.

"He took no action to merit me stopping him," Chester answered with a nonchalant roll of his shoulders. He cocked his head and fixed her with an unreadable look from beneath his mask. "Listen, witch, you're girl has chosen to stay here. I know you'll likely try to talk her out of it, but she won't listen to you. She's spoke with Logan. The man is... very persuasive. So whether you like it or not, you're all going to be here awhile. Would it really be so terrible if the girl had someone like me to watch over her?"

"I know what men like you want," Quelana hissed, wishing the infernal lift would come to its stop already so she could be rid of the man. "Don't think I'm foolish enough to believe its something as noble as 'watching over her'."

"And what do you want from her?" Chester asked, his own voice taking on some anger now. "You met her only a few days before I, and yet you clutch to her as selfishly as if she were your living child! What are your intentions?"

Quelana thought of Blighttown almost immediately, before she could stop herself, and of the path to Izalith that would lead her back to her sisters and to... what remained of her mother, if anything remained at all. The thoughts stole upon her mind so quickly, she'd barely processed them by the time Chester pressed his assault. "You'd use her the same as any man or woman in this castle. Don't think yourself so high above us humans because you can light a child's birthday candles with your bare hands. You're as prone to greed as any of us."

"You know nothing of who I am," Quelana said.

"And you know nothing of me, and yet you expect to pass judgement with none passed back in return?" Chester asked. "If you'd stop being so damned stubborn, you'd realize I'm trying to offer you a truce here. The girl... Abby... there's a certain quality to her. I won't deny it. She is special. Those around her are drawn to her, magnetized by her. It is... it is unfair for you to hog her all to yourself."

The man in that instant reminded her so much of Lautrec, she half- expected him to pull away his mask and reveal he was the golden knight in disguise. She fixed him with a glare before lifting her gaze to see the ride was finally coming to its end. "Stay away from her," Quelana warned.

"That's her decision, not yours," he pointed out.

"That's true," Quelana admitted, raising her hand. "But I would remind you that your men have removed my shackles, and accidents do happen." She commanded a spurt of flame to lick the air around her fingertips.

"Unleash your fire within these walls," Chester threatened, "and I'll see to it that your shackles are put right back on and you'll spend the rest of your days in Logan's special dungeon."

Special dungeon? Quelana thought, fixing him with a puzzled look.

For the first time since she'd met him, the masked man's eyes looked disconcerted beneath his mask, as if he'd stepped into a corner of their verbal battle he hadn't mean to step to.

Quelana opened her mouth to probe him further on this 'dungeon' when the lift jolted to a halt, and Abby's voice called to her from outside it, "Quelana!"

Both she and Chester shared a look that let the other know there would most-certainly be a second part of their conversation before Quelana, graciously, climbed off the wooden platform and came upon Abby

standing at the foot of a long flight of wooden stairs, barefoot and tired- looking, but smiling all the same. "Abby," she breathed the word with a wash of relief as she descended the stairs. "Are you alright?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine," Abby said, taking Quelana in her arms and squeezing. "Have they told you? Well, I guess they took the shackles away, so... you know?"

Quelana pulled back, but kept her hands resting on the girl's elbows. "You want to stay?"

Abby's smile broadened. She nodded.

Quelana considered asking her what this 'Logan' could have possibly said to change her mind, which had seemed so bullishly set upon leaving before she'd spoken with him, but Abby's eyes were dark under the lids, and there was a fatigued droop to her smile that looked foreign and strange on her pretty face, so Quelana held her tongue on the matter. Instead, she looked Abby over and asked, "Where are your boots?"

Abby looked to her feet and laughed. "Oh, my. I forgot them. They went flying. I almost slipped, but... I caught myself, and... I guess so much happened, I just... well, I forgot, and..." Her words were coming mumbled and disorganized, her eyes unfocused as she spoke. "Oh, Quelana. I promise you. We will still return you to Blighttown. I just... I need to stay for... a bit. I need to know if... if he is right..."

"You need rest," Quelana said, placing her hand on the girl's cheek to slow her incoherent mumbles. "Just answer me this, Abby. This Logan didn't harm you in any way or... or do anything to your mind, did he?"

Abby's brow scrunched up as if Quelana had asked something so preposterous it didn't merit an answer. She gave one anyway, "No. Nothing like that." Then, after swaying on her feet and snapping her eyes open to wake herself, added, "You're not mad at me, are you? For wanting to stay?"

"No, Abby," she assured the girl. "Come. We'll get you to bed," she said, glancing back up the staircase to Chester, who'd been watching them silently leaned against a pillar. "You promised guest quarters. Show us to them."

He did not move.  
"Yes... I suppose I would like to sleep for a bit," Abby admitted.

Chester shoved off the pillar at once and bowed to her. "As my lady commands. Follow me."

The guest quarters were found through a maze of winding tunnels, up a tight spiraling staircase that ascended the inner walls of a short tower,

and at the end of a long hall garnished with carpeting on its floor, paintings on its walls, and torches lighting its path. Chester moved beside a wooden door and gestured to it with a bow. "Logan offers his complete hospitality. Anything you should need, Abby, I will see to." His hand reached for hers and when Quelana moved to block it, he quickly brushed past her and snatched it up. "I will be at your beck and call," he whispered, tucked a thumb beneath the chin of his mask to expose a pair of thin lips, and kissed her hand. "...I could stay with you tonight. If you'd like."

Quelana took Abby by the arm and pulled her away from the man. "She wouldn't," she said and led her into the room. When she turned back to close the door, he was still standing there, tall and lean in his dark long coat and top hat, the painted face of his mask aglow from the nearest torchlight, he looked as menacing as his thorn-armored friend downstairs. She slammed the door on him.

The room was small, cozy: bookshelves along the walls, an unlit hearth at one end, a large bed at the other. It was a welcome and comforting change from the vast openness of the rest of the castle. Abby had collapsed to a cushioned chair beside the door the moment she'd gotten inside, and Quelana left her there to rest as she moved to the hearth, moved three logs of kindling from the outside of the firepit to the inside, and hovered her palm above them. She sprayed a soft bath of flame onto the logs, holding as they slowly caught, and the room came alive with their warmth and their light.

She turned back to ask Abby how she was feeling, but the girl had already fallen asleep in the chair. Quelana went to her, laid a hand to her forehead, and discovered she was not fevered. Only tired, she thought. So I hope. She bent and scooped her arms beneath the girl's knees and shoulders, lifting her and quickly spinning to deposit her to the bed beside the chair. It was a soft, large, thing, and Abby sunk into its quilted blanketing immediately. Quelana smiled, the sight of the girl resting so peacefully providing her with a different kind of warmth than the burning hearth, and brushed a short, rogue, strand of hair that she had missed when shaving the girl's head from her brow.

Quelana went to the door and fiddled with its handle til it locked, but upon a moment's inspection, she grew dissatisfied with it and decided to further fortify their quarters by dragging the cushioned chair before it, blocking its hinged path. She checked the windows that peeked in on either side of the hearth, locking them shut as well and drawing the heavy, burgundy, curtains closed over the frost-caked glass. She looked around the room, realizing she'd likely never be truly satisfied they were safe, and so crossed to the bed with a sigh and covered Abby in the blanketing before lowering herself beside the girl. I will watch over her, Quelana thought, resting her hand on Abby's side and watching as the girl's slow, rhythmic, breaths rose and fell it. Humans were always sleeping, it seemed, sometimes as long as half an entire day. She didn't

need that kind of rest; one of the few differences between herself and them. I will burn them all before they harm her.

It was with those thoughts that she drifted to sleep.

-o-o-o-

When she woke, her breathing came labored, her sight had gone to black, and the sounds of voices and movement came muffled to her ears. Her heart thundered so loudly in her own head, she thought for a moment it was a war drum. Instincts arose, and her hands grew warm with fire. Somewhere outside the blackness, a muffled voice yelped, and another snapped, "I told you!". Quelana twisted her arms, but someone was gripping them both above and below her elbows. "She's going to catch herself on fire!" Someone yelled. She shouted into the black and heard her own voice was muffled as well. They've put a bag over my head, she realized. These men are stealing me away to execute me. She roared and commanded another flash of fire from her palms, but this time she felt the flames run close to her own body, and someone shrieked, "You idiots!"

The grip on her arms came free and she stumbled away from her captors in the blackness, falling to her knees. Her hands came up and ripped the bag from her head, but it did little good: wherever they'd managed to haul her was very dark. Walls crowded in beside her elbows and faint silhouettes stood before her in a long, narrow, tunnel. A hand lashed out and struck her across the jaw, knocking her off balance and spilling her to the floor. The figure rushed forth, but she'd recovered enough to lift a hand, extend her fingers, and burn.

"AAAH!" The scream came so terrified from the figure, the men standing behind him recoiled. Her flame erupted into the hall, lighting it ablaze, and encapsulated him before it died; she'd left it burn just long enough for his clothing to catch, though. "She's burned me!" He shouted and began slapping at his flaming chest and legs in a panic. "She's killed me! Gods help me!"

The men behind the burning one rushed forth and tossed a heavy blanket over his head, wrapping him and shoving him to the ground to smother the flames. Quelana scrambled to her feet and backed away from them. One jolted forth, but she shouted and sent a trail of fire down the length of the tunnel. It was enough to scare him off so she could retreat further away. If they realize I need to rest my flames between spells, she thought with a sense of dread stealing over her, they'll swarm and kill me before I burn not two more of them.

"I told you!" One of them was screeching. "I warned you!"

She stole a glance over her shoulder and saw the tunnel had reached its end. It split into a 'T' shape, two more, equally-dark, passages rushing away in either direction. Where have they taken me? She wondered,

darting her eyes between the two paths frantically.

"She's getting away! Grab her!"

Quelana cupped her hands and sent a fireball flying down the tunnel at the men-the last of her inner flame's pool-and did not bother to watch what happened to them.

She turned, picked a path at random, and ran: ran as fast as she could; the men's screams filling the tunnel behind her in a chorus of terror and rage and pain.

Chapter 18

The deer entered the forest clearing, a trail of dotted footprints following along behind it in the thick blanket of snow that had layered itself upon ever last bit of the woods. The creature stepped forth cautiously, its long legs taking graceful strides to plow forth in the snowfall, and dipped its head to sniff at a cluster of plants. We'll all eat well tonight, Lautrec thought, lying as still as the snow itself atop an embankment, if the boy hurries up and takes the damned shot. He shifted subtly in the entrenched pit he'd laid himself in to squint deeper into the woods. There, amongst a cluster of browns and green, he could see Benjamin planted on one knee, his longbow shouldered, the bowstring pulled taught and nocked with an arrow. The boy's face was too distant for Lautrec to see, but the dark beard he'd sprouted along his chin was frosted with ice and his brow was set in a hard line below his fall of shaggy, brown, hair. Loose you fool, Lautrec thought. This is the cleanest shot you'll get.

Ben did not loose, however. He was still, quiet, but he wasn't loosing his arrow. Lautrec would have taken the shot himself, but he hadn't taken a bow along with them. He'd never been any good with a ranged weapon, found no use for them, and so he'd left the hunting today up to the boy. As far as he was concerned, the only skill worth training yourself in was dual-wielding. There was nothing quite like the thrill of combat up close, no shield to defend yourself, no spell to rely upon. When you dual- wielded, there was only you, your opponent, and the attack; always the attack. He liked that. The skill serves you little use today, though, he thought. And if the fool of a kid doesn't take the shot soon, we'll be eating dog again.

Somewhere far deeper in the woods a twig snapped. The distant click of sound was barely audible, but it was enough to spook the creature. The deer lifted its head from the plants, stared wide-eyed towards the sound, and broke for the opposite direction.

The arrow took its throat: clean, quick, and fatal.

Lautrec rose from his trench, brushed the snowfall from his leathers, and shuffled down the icy embankment. Benjamin was rushing forward to meet him at the opposite side of the clearing, smiling from ear to ear. "Got him," he said, lifting his chin and broadening the smile.

"Why didn't you take the shot sooner? Were you trying to lose us a meal?" Lautrec admonished the kid, stepping around a cluster of plants to kneel beside the catch. The deer was very dead, a clean line of blood spraying from its neck in a straight line beside it.

"There's no sport in hitting a still deer," Ben said, stepping beside him. "I wanted a moving target. And look at that shot!"

Lautrec looked up at the boy and frowned. "There's no 'sport' involved when it comes to deciding whether we'll eat tonight or not. Don't do that again."

"You're no fun. I did kill the thing."

Lautrec pulled strips of leather from his coat pocket and began binding the deer's hooves for the haul. As he worked, Ben circled the fallen creature, his eyes scanning the out perimeter of the clearing. "We're done today," Lautrec told him, guessing at the boy's thoughts.

"There's still light," Ben protested, pointing skyward where a chunk of glowing white stone was sitting lazily amongst the cloud beyond a stand of trees.

Lautrec pulled a dagger and cut the deer's throat to try and salvage the arrow that had taken it, but found the thing splintered against the creature's bone within. "We'll run out of arrows before we run out of light," he said, showing the kid the busted thing.

Ben shrugged. "The blacksmith can make more."

"I suppose he could," Lautrec admitted. "If he had the supplies, that is. Which he doesn't."

Ben fixed him with a defiant look, but after Lautrec did not waver, he sighed and slumped his shoulders in defeat. "Fine. Let's head back."

It was strange to see the kid with so much life to him. When Lautrec had first come across him at the Undead Asylum, he was alright, but as they came to the Firelink Shrine and the Burg beyond, he'd seemed to have lost all of his energy, moping along beside them and not saying much. He had been sick then, too, but this new Ben he'd come to was healthy and well. Which means if the witch's theory is correct, Lautrec thought as he hoisted the deer onto his shoulders, and both he and Abby are connected in some strange way... either the girl has been severely weakened... or she's dead. He grunted in exertion as his injured leg-which was growing less and less injured by the day-cracked beneath the weight of the deer when he stood. He winced, kicking it to work the stiffness from it, and began marching back through the snow the way they'd come, Ben trailing beside him. He looked at the boy's bearded face and narrowed his eyes. What does it matter if she's dead. Her or the witch. They were not your allies, Lautrec reminded himself, though he found his thoughts turning to them and what may have become of them frequently as the days passed.

They hadn't gone deep into the Darkroot Forest, opting to stay close enough to the Parish to retreat should they be overwhelmed by... well, anything that may have been stalking this new, cold, world of Lordran. The climb out up the hillsides were the worst, and Lautrec's knee didn't have the stamina yet to carry both the deer and himself, and so Benjamin

shared the load for awhile. Once the climb was done with, though, the path to the Parish was easy traveling. They trudged through a short stretch of woods, passed beneath a stone tower that Andre had called his home before the cold had come upon the world, and after only a short walk after, the church bell tower was looming above them in the sky, calling them home. Home, Lautrec thought, what an odd word to associate with this place. He'd been there for five nights now, though. He'd eaten with Andre and Domhnall and Sieglinde and Benjamin by night, had shared stories and thoughts by day, had even watched as Sieglinde tended to some of the stolen children's wounds that they'd taken from Logan. It was growing more and more difficult not to think of the place as a home. It matters not, he told himself. We leave on the morrow.

It was Sieglinde who greeted them at the church doors. The woman-who stood taller than Lautrec himself-bounded down the stairs upon spotting them and her freckled face brightened as she clasped her hands together. "A deer!?" She shouted, laughing. "Oh, that's... that's wonderful! Andre!" She called back into the church. "The boys brought home a deer!"

Boys, Lautrec thought with a laugh. I haven't been called one of the 'boys' since squiring for Sir Tannenhall back home in Carim. Sieg moved forth to congratulate them, but Lautrec held a hand and shouldered past her. She fixed him with a disappointed look, but Benjamin was right behind him, and soon enough she had her big arms wrapped around his body, squeezing. "A deer..." he heard her say breathlessly over his shoulder as he climbed the steps into the church. "Tonight we will eat well."

Of that much, at least, she had been right. As night stole upon the world outside the church walls, the fire and smell of cooking meat filled the world inside. It had been Domhnall who'd set up their little dining hall nestled snugly inside the church's tiered alter section. There was a long wooden table (that was really a patched up pew turned on its side) and rows of chairs for each side. At the head of the church, beneath the broken statue, Andre had built them a firepit, and it was there that the deer's meat cooked and sizzled over the flames. The smell had pulled some of the children from their hiding place behind the cracked section of wall that housed them, and as Lautrec sat, he could see two pairs of white eyes, starkly contrasted against dirty faces, watching from within. Sieglinde took food to them as soon as it was ready, and a chorus of excited whispers and giggles came rushing out from within their room as she did. Domhnall wore a big, toothy, smile as he clapped both Ben and Lautrec on their shoulders and congratulated them on a good job. Andre finished cutting portions for everyone else, and brought the food to the table on a slab of wood. The four of them feasted upon it so quickly, so hungrily, Sieglinde scolded them upon returning, adding, "It's like feasting with four Andres!"

"But my lady," Domhnall said in his pleasant way, a mouthful of deer slightly muffling his words, "Andre already feasts like four Andres!"

The table had a good laugh at that. Even Lautrec managed a grin. They ate the rest of their meal graciously, the blacksmith thundering an occasional belch (to which Sieglinde was quick to point out his lack of manners each time), Dom sharing tales of his life as a traveling merchant, and Benjamin listening intently, transfixed with each ebb and flow of drama in the man's stories. Lautrec didn't say a word. He'd always preferred to listen at a dinner table instead of converse. He found more often than not, people revealed more of who they truly were when the food was hot and the sun was down and their bellies full of meat and mead. They had no honey for proper mead, but the blacksmith had stolen away a bit of a dry, red, wine from the Archives before they'd fled, and had saved it for a special occasion. Being as this was their last night together and the first night they had the pleasure of feasting on anything other than dog, he'd uncorked the bottle and poured.

When the food had gone, and Sieglinde had checked and confirmed the children were sleeping, Andre raised his arms over his head and growled one of his big, grizzly, sighs as he stretched and slumped into the chair at his back. The table had gone quiet, a cold wind slipping through the battened windows and sending their little fire into a wild dance that painted the walls with the dark, shifting, silhouettes of their shadows. The blacksmith peered across the table, staring at Lautrec as he spoke, "How was that knee today?"

"Carried me out and back," Lautrec told him, sipping at the last of his wine.

"No pain?"

"None worth noting."

Andre nodded. "Then yer still plannin' on takin' off tomorrow?"

"I am," Lautrec said. He looked to Benjamin. "Any protests?"

Ben, who'd they'd all agreed upon two days earlier was the only one of them that could accompany him, shook his head. "No. I'm ready."

Andre leaned forward in his chair, folding his meaty hands together on the table. "Let me hear it one more time."

Lautrec sighed. "I think we've all heard it enou-"

"Once more, young fella," Andre insisted. "Humor an old man."

He watched the leathery skin of the smith wrinkle up at the eyes and brow, nodding for him to go on, and so, with a shake of his head, he did. "I'll take the boy to Sen's Fortress," he began. "We passed the path on our way back from the woods. It was clear. You claim the fortress is abandoned, and our climb to its top should be brief and easy. Once there, we are to await this 'bat winged demon' of yours to carry us to Anor

Londo."

"You have to be kind to it," Sieglinde added. "The demon has always worked the secret passage to the city, but since the cold... it has grown feral and distrusting. It will still take you, though. It took us."

Ben ran a hand through his beard. "I'm not thrilled at the idea of being carried around by some demon."

"On that we can agree," Lautrec said. "But what other choice is there? Swinging around through the forest would be long and perilous."

"Aye," Domhnall agreed. "Twas the way I came. Wouldn't take that journey again for all the rare armors in the world."

"Once you're in Anor Londo..." Sieglinde pressed him to continue.

"We head towards the Archives. I know that way," Lautrec said. "Then we find your little shortcut outside the main passage. Black stone resting against a white tree. We spot that and follow a hidden path that-"

"It's no hidden path," Andre interrupted. "It's an illusionary wall. You'll have to pass right through it, as if the stone weren't even there at all!"

"Right," Lautrec said, his eyes flicking to Ben. "I'll make him test that." Ben frowned.  
"Then..." Andre pressed.

This is what he wants confirmed, Lautrec thought. More than anything, this is what running over this damned journey again was all about. "Then I kill Logan," Lautrec said. Or I don't, he thought, keeping his face straight to mask his ambivalence. We will see. For all I know, you're the insane one, smith, and Logan is the one with his mind still in tact. In this new world of ours... who can know for sure.

Andre nodded. "Yes... yes."

"And my father," Sieglinde said, the words spilling from her mouth in a rush of desperation. "He may yet still live. Find him, knight. Find him and I will be forever in your debt."

"I'll... do what I can," he told her. These people save your life, he thought. And now they'd have you running their errands and carrying out their assassinations all over Lordran.

"Abby may be there," Domhnall added to the conversation. "If she still lives that is..." His voice grew sad and he smiled wistfully at his hands. "Such a sweet thing to come upon the company of such cruel men."

"That's right," said Andre. "I forgot. Your friends may yet still live. If Kirk

and the others took them prisoner-"

"They aren't my friends," Lautrec cut him off. "And I know the knight of thorns. He's not the prisoner-taking sort."

Andre's face darkened. "Yes... the man was monstrous even at the Archives under Solaire's watch. He liked to spar and fight and take women, often times screaming all the way, to his quarters after he'd had a few drinks in him. The man is pure venom. But if the Knight Solaire rode in their comapny-"

"Solaire was in ropes. I told you that."

Sieglinde shook her head. "It just doesn't make sense. Logan sent the Warrior of the Sun out to lead those men and... well, find you I suppose. Why would they betray him?"

"If Chester was with him, it makes sense I s'ppose," Andre said. "Him and Kirk were thick as thieves them two. Neither ever liked Solaire. The pyromancer... who can say about that fella. He kept to himself a lot in the Archives."

"What other kind of men can I expect to run into at these Archives?" Lautrec questioned. "Doesn't Logan have a hold on any of these people? He is their leader isn't he?"

Andre and Sieglinde shared an unclear look. It was Sieglinde who spoke first, "Things were... not in a good state when we fled the Archives. Logan... he doesn't come out of his dungeon. The men and women were growing restless. There was... talk of mutiny."

"Mutiny?" Lautrec echoed. "If they're going to overthrow the wizard, why send me to kill him?"

"They won't be able to overthrow Logan, that's why," Sieglinde went on. "We told you. The man commands golems to his will."

"He had five or six when we left," Andre added. "But it seemed more were showing up every day. They'd come lumberin' up out of the caverns in the garden or up through Anor Londo from the forest. Strangest thing is, they all came carrying these... hmm, I guess they were cogs or something. Wheels, maybe."

"Cogs?" Ben piped up. "What does he want with cogs?"

Andre shrugged. "What does any man want with a cog? Seems to me like he's building some contraption."

Lautrec drummed his fingers along the table. "How does he command these golems?"

"No idea, young fellow," Andre admitted. "He's a mad wizard. I'm sure he has his ways."

Lautrec frowned. "So, assuming I make it to these Archives without losing my head to some beast, or being dropped to my death by a winged demon, and if I manage to break into the castle and find Logan, make my way past his army of golems, and get close enough to finish the job... he may not even die."

Sieglinde's brow wrinkled. "What does that mean?"

"He commands golems, who's to say he hasn't figured some spell to cast himself into immortality."

"That's ridiculous," Andre said.

"I would say the same thing about commanding golems," Lautrec said, "but apparently he's gotten along with that just fine."

"He'll die," Andre assured him with a nod of his great mane of white hair.

"He'd better," Benjamin snapped. "It's bad enough we're being sent out on this crazy mission! I don't even want to think about going all that way to find some foe we can't slay!"

Domhnall, who'd been listening to them all quietly for awhile, spread his arms to his side and said, "Alright, so you kill Logan and stop the madman from taking any more children... what then? If Abby is gone..."

"I'll look for the girl," Lautrec admitted. "But she's likely dead, merchant." He turned to Benjamin. "And if she is... she wasn't the only Chosen Undead. He can light the bonfire at the Kiln of the First Flame the same as her."

Ben's eyes widened and he scanned the table, seemingly surprised they were all looking at him so intently. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and lowered his head.

"He'd need the Lordvessel," Dom said, studying every inch of the bearded boy beside him. "The way's been all sealed up again, the Bequeathed Lord Souls scattered."

"Scattered?" Lautrec questioned. "Scattered to what?"

Domhnall shrugged. "To whatever has come back to this new, cold, Lordran of ours."

Lautrec thought of the two-headed Taurus Demon they'd fought and killed at the Firelink Shrine and of the possible horrors that awaited in the other, darker, corners of the world. The thought made him feel ill. He put it aside. "None of this matters if we die on our journey," he said. "We can

figure this all out when we return."

"Perhaps the boy should stay then," Domhnall suggested. "If poor Abby truly is gone... he may be Lordran's last hope."

"I don't want to stay," Ben protested immediately. "I've been left back once. I can fight. I can shoot. I proved that, Lautrec! You know I did!"

Lautrec raised his hand to calm the kid. "Relax, boy. I'm taking you with me. I need someone watching my back." He surveyed the thin, shaggy- headed, young man before him. "Just watch it well."

Ben nodded, fighting back a smile that was threatening to creep up his face.

"If we're done here," Lautrec said, turning back to the table. "I have a long journey ahead of me tomorrow. I'd like to rest." He began to stand from his chair when he caught a strange look pass from Sieglinde to Andre. He narrowed his eyes on the two of them and sat back down. "What is it? What now?"

"There is... one more problem you may run into along the way," Andre said, twiddling his giant thumbs against one another.

"Oh?" Lautrec questioned, his eyes shifting from Andre to Sieglinde. "And what problem could there be that was worth keeping concealed from me?"

"We weren't concealing it," Sieglinde protested. "It just... didn't seem important earlier when we were trying to talk you into going."

"If it's important enough to bring up now, it was important enough then," Lautrec said, anger heating his skin.

"Sen's Fortress," Andre said quietly. "It's... not exactly abandoned."

Always another lie, Lautrec thought with a shake of his head. "What then? Dogs?"

"No, no, nothing like that," Sieglinde said. "We made it through the fortress without seeing a single foe."

"Then what?"

"In the early days of the Great Cold," Andre began. "When people first started gathering under Logan's newly acquired castle... not everyone was permitted." He lifted his eyes to look at Lautrec. "Do you know of the bishop, Havel?"

"Havel the Rock?" Lautrec asked. "Big man? Heavy armor? Carries a dragon's tooth for a weapon?"

"Aye," Andre said. "And a man who never hid his disdain for magic and wizards. Logan, of course, knew of this. So when Havel showed up at the Archives like the rest of Lordran... Logan had him turned away."

Lautrec looked from Andre to Sieglinde and back. "So what? He lives in Sen's?"

"He didn't go away quietly," Andre went on. "He made camp outside the walls. By day he would smash the gates with his dragon's tooth. By night he would scream and scream, demanding Logan face him in combat like a true warrior."

"Logan's no fool," Lautrec admitted. "Unless he had an open field as his battleground, the bishop would slaughter him."

"But Logan did face him," Sieglinde explained. "After three nights of Havel's screaming, he had his men permit the man inside and see him to his dungeon."

"He faced Havel in the Archives dungeons?"

"At the base of the prison tower, yes," Andre confirmed. "No one was there for the fight. No one witnessed what took place between those two men whose hatred for each other was so contemptuous they meant to kill one another while the world around them was crumbling."

"Well I know Logan lives," Lautrec said. "You're telling me Havel does as well?"

Andre nodded. "What I hear-and this is only what I hear-is that Logan defeated Havel the Rock, but instead of killing him, poisoned his mind with some sorcery or another and turned him as mad as Logan himself... maybe madder.

In the end, Havel was banished anyway, but the man who walked out of that castle was not the same man that went into it. Men say his eyes... his eyes had gone hollow, but the rest of him hadn't, if that makes any sense to ya. The story goes that Havel wandered aimlessly outside the castle walls for days before marching off towards Anor Londo. No one's ever seen him since."

Lautrec frowned. "But you said-"

"We didn't see anyone in Sen's Fortress," Sieglinde said, a look of dread crossing over her freckled face. "We heard him, though. Heard him screaming. ...heard him crying."

Ben's mouth had fallen agape, his eyes wide and frightened. "And now we... we have to go through there?"

"He didn't bother us," Andre said.

"I don't think he heard us, Andre," Sieglinde added. "So just... I'd be very quiet going through the fortress is all. It shouldn't be a problem."

"No," Lautrec started sardonically, "No problem at all. Only a mad man with a weapon the size of a horse, armor on his body that can scarcely be penetrated by sword or spell, and a massive, dark, maze of a tower for him to roam around in, smashing things to pieces."

"You can do it," Andre said. "I seen you cut down five men at once to get what you want before."

"None of them were carrying a dragon's tooth..."

Ben was looking between the two of them, a perplexed expression frozen on his face. "So... what now? Do we still go?"

Domhnall, Andre, and Sieglinde all fixed him with the same, anxious, look.

Lautrec glanced around at them, stood, and shoved his chair back under the table. "Now we rest. We leave first thing on the morrow. Let us hopewhen we come across this mad Havel the Rock... the Gods smile upon us."

Or better yet, he thought, walking off towards his bedding without waiting for response, let us hope we don't need cross him at all.

In the church's upper level, a sole window was cut into an indentation in the hall as he passed to his room. He paused and peered outside it into the dark. There, resting on a faraway cliff beneath the pale moonlight, a toy-sized structure of stone loomed over Lordran and the surrounding forests, tiny specks of light glowing from within like fireflies come to rest. It was the distant figure of the Duke's Archives.

Lautrec narrowed his eyes upon it. Ana... I'm coming.

Chapter 19

The great hall was alive with a chorus of chatter, as was usual during meal hour, when Solaire entered beneath the brightly bannered archway that spilled into the grandiose room. The knight drew up to the end of a row of long, wooden, tables, and stood watching over the people of Lordran as they feasted; they were the only people left. Praise the sun, he thought, his eyes flicking from table to table, our numbers dwindle as the days pass. It was true: before he'd ventured out on Logan's quest with the- admittedly, poorly chosen-men he'd taken alongside him, the great hall would have had every last seat filled when the rations of meat and bread and water were passed out. Now, however, he could see empties-plenty of them-and it awakened a sadness in his heart. How many lost their lives from a sickness we could not cure? He wondered. Or a wound we could not close? Or a belly we could not fill? They were dying here. He could see it not only from the empty seats at the long table, but from the grim looks upon their faces.

A couple seated just beside his vantage point wore perhaps the most somber of all faces. The man was Timothy, a burly, usually-cheerful, fellow who Solaire had shared a meal or two with in days past. His wife, Eileen, was a squat, plump, woman with a bun of dark hair tied up above her round face. There was usually a third beside them, a boy of eight years, but he was missing. When Solaire moved beside the couple, it was Eileen who's dark eyes fell upon him first. Her cheeks reddened and she grabbed at her husband's hand to call his attention. Timothy looked to the knight and his brow creased sorrowfully. "Knight Solaire..." he greeted in a quiet voice.

"Timothy. Eileen," he returned the greeting. "How goes your-"

"It goes like shit," Eileen growled, barring her teeth at him like some feral beast. "Don't play the fool with us, Solaire. You can see our son is not among us."

Solaire swallowed and shifted uncomfortably on his heel. "My lady, I-" "It's all gone to shit, knight," Eileen snapped. "And it's your fault!"

"Ellie..." Her husband began calmly, reaching across the table to grip her hand.

She snatched it away before he could and turned her anger on him instead. "Don't you shush me, Tim. Don't you do that. We've held our tongues long enough. I'm tired of suffering in silence." She looked back to Solaire, venom in her eyes. "You tell Logan we're sick of it. You hear me? We sit here day after day as our people die around us and our children disappear and we're sick of it!"

"Your children disappear?" Solaire repeated.

"My boy..." Eileen began, but her bottom lip took on a quiver and her brow creased and shortly after, tears were spilling from her eyes. Her husband stood, shuffled around the table, and sat beside her, stroking her hair and whispering comforts in her ear.

Solaire watched them quietly for a while before saying, "My lady, if something has happened to your child, you need only tell me and I swear to you I will do everything I can to make it right."

"What's the point?" The woman managed between sniffles. "We're all going to die here."

"I-" Solaire began, intending to refute that claim, when an arm pulled at his elbow. He turned to see the boy who'd squired for him, Henrik, standing at his side attentively. "Henrik," he greeted with a nod.

The young man bowed, but when his head lifted again, his face was as somber as the couple's beside them. "Petrus doesn't want you talking with the people," he said sheepishly. "He says... says you're riling them up."

"Petrus?" Solaire questioned. He looked in the direction the boy had come from and saw the heavyset man stood atop a raised platform at the far end of the hall; his arms folded across his black chainmailed armor, his eyes boring across the room into Solaire.

"I'm sorry, Solaire," Henrik began. "I squire for him now. You were gone, and... no one knew whether you were coming back or not, and-"

"It's quite alright, Henrik," Solaire told the young man, offering him a reassuring smile and a clap on the shoulder. "You made yourself useful. That's what matters," he said, then after lifting his eyes back to the fat man standing vigil over the hall, "You can tell Petrus I won't be a bother." Henrik nodded and turned to leave, but Solaire kept hold of his arm, jerking him back. He added, "But you make sure he knows I intend to be informed about any troubles that have befallen our men and women. That includes any 'missing children'."

"Yes, sir," Henrik said, bowed, and headed back across the hall.

"Solaire!" A new voice called.

The knight turned and squinted into the sea of heads and bodies that littered the great hall. He spotted a man looking his way, but the fellow was shouting at a friend of his near Solaire. A bit further on, across from a table filled with a group of sorrow-faced women-Solaire knew them well; they were all widowed, their husbands killed by the hollows or by disease or by worse-he spotted a hulking, black, tank of a man waving to him. Tarkus, he thought as he returned the wave and began heading the man's way. Petrus be damned. I'm speaking with my friend.

Black Iron Tarkus stood six-and-a-half feet tall, an enormous greatsword strapped to his backside, an equally monstrous greatshield laying at his feet near the table. The man was a terrifying sight, but he had a kind heart, and when the people or Lordran first began gathering beneath the Archive's walls, Solaire took a liking to him immediately. "Friend," Solaire greeted as he waded through a cluster of people feasting between the tables. "Praise the sun."

"Praise the sun," Tarkus returned, pulled his helm away from his head to shake out a thick fall of dark hair, and smiled. "Glad to see you in one piece."

"Aye," Solaire agreed. "Same to you, friend."

Tarkus' smile wavered. "It has been... dark times for those of us that remained in the Archives."

"So I hear. Eileen just informed me her child has gone missing? I remember a month ago, Miandra's girl vanished. Are the two related you think? What is Logan doing about this?"

Now Tarkus' smile had completely sunk away, only a look of sympathy left on his square-jawed face. "Solaire... it's not just Eileen's boy. There's been eight more gone since Miandra's girl."

"Eight?" Solaire echoed incredulously. "That... that can not be."

"It is, friend," Tarkus went on, hushing his voice so it was nearly lost among the great hall's myriad of chatter. "A search went out for them that produced no results. The mothers and fathers... well, they're angry, Solaire. Understandably so. They got together and demanded to see Logan, but, well, you know how it is. Logan won't see anyone. That hasn't changed since you left."

Solaire shook his head, his stomach feeling ill. Children, he thought. Of all the terrible cruelties in this world, the ones that befall children are the cruelest. "This is... dreadful news. Eight children... I cannot begin to fathom the anguish the parents must be experiencing."

Tarkus' eyes flicked across the room, and when they appeared satisfied at what they saw, the big man leaned near to Solaire and took him by the shoulder to whisper, "There's been more than eight gone missing now, but... not all went without their parent's knowledge."

Solaire frowned. "What does that mean?"

"Means there are some of us who have taken matters into our own hands since Logan won't," Tarkus went on whispering. "We can talk more another time. The great hall isn't the most secure place to exchange this kind of information."

Solaire pulled away and fixed the man with an angered look. "Logan could help us. You speak as if he's not to be trusted."

Tarkus shook his head. "You ever hear the phrase 'loyal to a fault', my friend? Look around you. The men and women of this castle are sick of taking commands from a man who won't even grace them with his presence. We're running out of supplies, friend. And food storages. Who do we turn to about this? Logan won't be seen, and that Petrus fellow... well, he swears hes taking all our complaint to Logan, but... we never hear nothing back."

"I will take your complaints," Solaire assured him.

A mirthless smile came upon the big man's face. He clapped Solaire on the shoulder. "I'm sure you will, my friend. I'm sure you will. We'll talk later." And with that, he returned to his seat and began eating once more.

Solaire left him, thinking on what he'd meant by 'some of us have taken matters into our own hands'. It was on those thoughts he was dwelling when a shout came from further down the hall. The knight lifted his head to see a group of men-one he recognized as the bowmen, Reyes-crowded around a table at the very back of the room. When Solaire spotted them, a bald man with a mane of golden whiskers around his chin stood and pointed his way. "Fat man won't take our requests," he shouted across the hall, pointing at Petrus and gathering a wash of attention from the crowded tables around him. "So I'm letting you know. Tell Logan we need arrows! The food don't hunt itself!"

A woman's hand reached up from a table and grabbed at Solaire's wrist. "Knight Solaire? Oh you've returned to us! Thank the Gods! Listen, I need Logan to give me access to the restricted section of the library. There are supplies there. We need bandages, splints, ointment-"

"My lady, I'm not sure-"

"Solaire!" Another woman, a short fall of ebony hair tangled about her brow, shouted from a table further down. "You're taking request to Logan?" He opened his mouth to tell her he wasn't sure that was the case, but she plowed on before he could. "You tell him Winniefred Marbella needs to be taken out of the kitchens! That woman is nothing but a pain and I won't work with her no more!"

"Oh, shut up, Gillian!" A shrill voice snapped from across the hall.

"You hold your tongue, Winniefred! You don't do nothin' but slow us down and complain!"

"My ladies," Solaire started in attempt to diffuse the situation.

"Solaire, I need you to take a message to Logan for me," A man at his left said, tugging at his elbow.

"Solaire!" Another shouted and began rambling off a request he could not hear because of the next two men who crowded around him and began asking about some 'hidden storage' of supplies to men their armors.

Three woman were marching across the great hall, defiant, angry, looks burning in their eyes, and they were heading right towards him. "Solaire!" One called, waving. "Knight!"

"Please, everyone," Solaire stammered as their voices drowned his own in their demands. "I can take your requests, but please only one at a time! I-"

"You tell Logan we're sick of watching our friends and family die!" A woman shriek.

"Tell him if he doesn't give us a plan soon," A man beside her growled, sticking a finger in the knight's direction. "He'll be answering to our swords."

"Don't forget about Winniefred!" The woman from earlier shouted, and her friends around her cheered and laughed.

Solaire put a hand to his brow, lowered his head, and stepped quickly around the growing mob. They called after him, but he ignored them and marched through the room, heading for the one partially empty, somewhat quiet, corner of the great hall. The shouts followed along beside him, but once he seated himself at a table, they began to wither away. He held there, frozen, until he was sure they'd forgotten about him, then finally lifted his head and breathed a sigh of relief. I return to a moral that is ten fold worse than what is was when I left, he thought. How can Logan expect to lead these people in such a state of disarray? He was pondering that very question when movement beside him caught his eye.

He turned to see a timid-looking woman with a bun of strawberry-blond hair hovering above her head. Solaire hadn't even noticed her sitting there all alone when he'd taken his seat, and when he narrowed his eyes upon her, he realized who it was. "Lady Anastacia?" He asked.

She turned to him, her sharp-featured face wrinkled with just as much anxiety and stress as there had been when he'd departed. Her arms were folded across the dingy robes she wore around her chest, and Solaire saw there was no food on the table before her. She's a firekeeper, Chester had once told him. The flames are her nourishment. He bowed to the woman. "My lady. It is... good to see you. I hope you are enjoying your stay with us." How could she be? he thought immediately. This place is chaos.

The woman did not speak or move or show any hint that she'd heard him at all; only stared forth with that same fearful look on her face, as if he were going to strike her. She shifted a bit on her bench and turned her eyes back to the empty table once more.

Solaire tried his hardest to think of some words he could offer the woman

to either comfort her or perhaps get her talking, but after awhile he'd come up with none, and so resigned to let her be. He sat there beside her as quietly as she, too worried to eat, and for a long time it was only the two of them and it was peaceful. It was the snickering, masked, fool who interrupted it.

Chester dropped into the bench across the table and folded his gloved hands atop it. "Hello, knight," his voice came muffled from beneath his mask, calm and with that never-wavering hint of amusement to it; as if he were in on the world's greatest joke that no one else was smart enough to understand.

Solaire glared at him. "My apologies, my lady," he spoke to Anastacia, though did not remove his eyes from Chester's. "I did not mean to attract trash such as this to your dinner table."

Chester snickered. "So cruel, knight. So cruel." The dark eyes beneath his mask flicked to Anastacia of Astora and back. "Actually, this 'trash' is here on business. With the both of you, as it turns out."

Anastacia beside him, for the first time, lifted her eyes to the man and the slight tightening of her face proved that she was not, in fact, deaf. Still, she spoke no words.

"What business?" Solaire asked, pulling his gaze from her back to the crossbowmen. "Is this some game?"

"No game," Chester went on, lifting his hands as if to show he wasn't hiding anything. "Logan's going to speak with the people shortly. He wants the both of you at his side."

"Speak with them!?" Solaire repeated. "I... I'm not sure that is his finest idea. These people... they seem very upset with him. Perhaps if he speak to me, and I can relay-"

"No," Chester cut him off. "He's going to address them himself. He wants you at his side in case anyone gets out of hand. He wants her... well, I suppose you'll see why he wants her."

A quiet whimper sounded from Anastacia's throat and she clutched her robes to her body more tightly.

"What of his golems?" Solaire asked. "Why doesn't he use them?"

"He knows the people don't like them," Chester explained. "It wouldn't be a very wise idea to emerge from the prison tower with an army of nine golems at his side."

"He commands nine now!?"  
Chester took a breath, letting the knight know he'd grown bored with the

conversation. "Look, just get up and follow me out. Can you handle that, knight, or is your armor too heavy to lift off that bench?"

Solaire didn't humor the man with an answer. Instead, he rose, turned to Anastacia beside him, and offered her his hand. "Come, my lady."

She looked at it as if it were a dagger. Her eyes flicked from his hand to his face an she shook her head.

"Logan's not asking," Chester said. "You can come on your own, or you can come dragged along behind me. That's your only choice."

"Don't speak to her like that," Solaire snapped. He softened his voice when he turned back to the firekeeper. "Come. I won't hurt you, my lady. I swear to you my protection."

After a long moment's hesitation, she delicately placed her hand in Solaire's and rose from the bench. He smiled, bowed, and gestured for her to fall in beside him. When she timidly moved there, he began walking on, Chester leading them along the far wall of the hall, careful to avoid the clusters of men and women who would surely halt or slow their progress. They made it out, thankfully uninterrupted, and then Chester was walking them down a long, torch-lit, hallway that wound deeper into the castle's interior. As they walked, Solaire pointed out various paintings that decorated the walls, explaining their origins to the best of his ability to the firekeeper at his side. Chester glanced back and rolled his eyes, but the woman seemed at least mildly attentive as he spoke, and so he went on. After a long travel through the Archive's halls, they came upon a small, unfurnished, room; a wooden planks for a floor, stone pillars holding the ceiling above and adorned in candles.

"Abby!" Solaire called upon entering the room.

The girl was standing beside one of the pillars, resting her arm against it. Her cleric armor and heavy coating were gone, replaced with a white, silky, robe that hung loose on her little frame. She stepped forth, barefoot, and her face came into the candle light. Some of the girl's hair was slowly starting to return to her, leaving a loose tangle of brown strands clutching to her brow. Beneath the hair, though, Solaire was disheartened to see Abby's eyes were heavily bagged with dark rims and her usually exuberant smile could only muster half of its former lift as she set it upon him. "My knight," she croaked from a hoarse throat and opened her arms.

He released Anastacia's hand beside him and stepped forth to take hold of her, fearing she might collapse if he did not. "My lady, are you alright?"

"Yes..." She said, pressing her face to his chest and squeezing, but after a moment's hesitation, she whispered, "No," and a quiet sob escaped her lips.

"What's wrong?" Solaire asked, fixing Chester over her shoulder with a

shrewd glare. "Has any harm befallen you? Has this scoundrel-"

"No, Solaire, no. Nothing like that," she went on, pulling away from his chest and setting her pretty blue eyes-that were now red and puffy with tears-on him. "It's Quelana... she left me."

"Left you?"

Abby nodded. "I knew she didn't want to stay long... I knew she wanted to get back to her family... I didn't know what else to do, Solaire. I'm not... I'm not sure of anything anymore. I would have went with her if she'd given me the time. I would have..." She sniffled and swiped at her eyes.

"Are you sure she's left the Archives?"

"Y-yes... the guard saw her go and..." She took a breath. "She killed a man in her escape."

"I saw her fleeing towards Anor Londo with my own two eyes," Chester added, and when Solaire stared at the man to test his words, he thought he finally understood the mask. I can't read his honesty, the knight realized. Who knows if he speaks lies or truth with that thing guarding every inch of his face. "A terrible thing to abandon a girl as sweet as Abby."

"I would've gone," Abby said again. "I just wanted to... know if Logan is right... if I don't have to die..."

Solaire wasn't sure what she meant by those words, but simply speaking them seemed to bring the girl pain, and so he left the subject alone. Instead, he put a finger to her chin and lifted her head to meet her eyes. "Are you sleeping, my lady?"

"I can't sleep," Abby explained. "They're mad at me. They cast nightmares onto me now."

"Mad at you? Who's mad at you?"

Her look drifted from his eyes to stare off into nothing. "All of them. The hollows. The demons. The beasts. The knights. They want me to come to them."

Solaire took a breath, trying to make sense of her words. "Anor Londo? Is that what you speak of, Abby? The army you said was awaiting you in Anor Londo? They're mad at you now?"

Abby's eyes returned to his. "Yes. Very mad. I can't sleep. I'm afraid."

"The nightmares will pass," a deep voice spoke from a hall stretching off the side entrance of the room. "The wicked things only wish to break you, Abby. We will show them. You can not be broken."

Logan came shuffling forth from the shadows, his massive hat wobbling

atop his head, his long, tattered, robe dragging along behind him as his feet sounded against the wooden floor. Solaire's mouth fell agape. He hadn't seen Logan outside the damp, dark, confines of the prison tower in a very, very, long time. With the man came an entire change of mood in the atmosphere. He heard Anastacia whimper beside him again, and Chester stood a bit straighter. Even Abby seemed to try and shake some of her sadness free upon seeing the man, releasing Solaire and turning to face him.

"Logan..." Solaire said. "What... I..."

"It is good to see you, my friend," Logan greeted with a nod of his enormous hat. "Praise the sun."

"Praise the sun," Solaire returned, taking a breath and composing himself. "Logan... what are we doing? I'm not sure meeting with the people is the wisest of moves on this day. They don't seem... very happy with the state of things right now."

"Exactly," Logan admitted, still shuffling nearer to the group. "Which is why now is the only time to strike."

"Strike?"

Soft laughter rumbled from beneath his hat. "In a sense. Strike them with hope. Raise their morale. Give them something to look forward to. We need only a bit more time now. Abby, sweet girl, has seen to that." He reached them and took Abby in his arms. She went without protest, and above her shoulder, Solaire caught a glimpse of Logan's face under his hat brim's shadow. The candle light flickered off it, and for the first time since he'd met him, Solaire thought Logan looked old. Wrinkles lined his skin, which had taken on a sallow complexion, and his hair was as dry and brittle looking as old straw; as grey as the wolf they'd picked up in the forest. His eyes lifted to Solaire and looked-

-red: like a demon's, piercing into your soul, eating your hope.

Solaire gasped, shook his head, and looked again. Logan's eyes appeared nothing like that. They were a pale blue and the sides were lined with crow's feet, sure, but they were a man's eyes, not a demon's. What a thought to have, Solaire told himself, Perhaps I'm not resting well myself.

"Are you alright, Solaire?" Logan asked, still squeezing Abby close to his body. "You look a bit pale."

"I- ...I'm fine."

"Good," Logan said, released Abby, and fixed her with a smile. "Are you ready, sweet girl? That's the more important question."

"Yes," Abby said, though the smile had faded entirely from her face.

"Good, good," he cooed. "Then we should get going to the gardens to prepare." He lifted his eyes to Anastacia at Solaire's side. "What about you, firekeeper. Feel like keeping a fire today?"

Abby turned from Logan immediately and looked to the firekeeper herself. Her eyes scanned the woman with intent curiosity. "You're her?" She asked. "Anastacia?"

Anastacia recoiled from the girl, frightened, trying to hide behind Solaire's shoulder.

Abby only stared forth, a wistful little smile coming to her face. "You're beautiful. Actually... you look just like him... why would he want to hurt you?"

A strange look passed between the two that Solaire could not read. Logan watched on as well, letting the moment pass before taking Abby by the hand. "Let us go. We have a show to put on."

The inner garden that was nestled snugly between three, towering, walls of the castle, and the looming mound of crystals hovering above the caves to the West, never grew quite as cold as the rest of Lordran had. Perhaps it was those very walls that shielded it from the biting winds and the heaviest of snowfalls that kept it warmer, but Solaire could not say. He only knew he liked being here, especially when the sun was high in the sky, and what was left of its light and warmth was upon his brow. The five of them walked out of an arched tunnel and into the heart of the gardens; tall trees thick with snowfall standing sentinel all around them as they went. The snow underfoot was much thinner than it had been in the Darkroot woods, and trekking across the stretch of frosted grass and thinning plants was easy-going. They came upon a wooden platform that had, clearly, been recently constructed. Planks of unused wood still rested beside the thing, and as they neared, Solaire saw a short flight of stairs had been erected at its side.

Logan pointed the way and the five of them climbed to the raised platform. Abby brushed snow from her bare feet and Chester kicked his boots beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder. Solaire eyed the man suspiciously before turning to the front of the platform and drinking in the sight of the garden sprawled before him. He could see that great tower of blue and white crystal on the horizon, watching over them like a guardian eye. The pale sun was falling behind it, and the light was playing with the crystal surface in queer ways. He breathed a refreshing pull of cold air before turning from the sight and looking to the platform itself. An unlit bonfire had been constructed at its base, nothing more. He was ready to ask what was happening when the crowd noise caught his attention.

They came streaming out of the castle in thick, clustered, lines. Solaire watched as the men and women and children who'd he'd been feasting

with and listening to complain not thirty minutes earlier filed out from the Archives and began spreading across the garden, slowly making their way towards the platform like a dark cloud moving along the white snowfall underfoot. Their numbers had looked small to the knight in the great hall, but here, where they could all be seen in one, large, group, they made an impressive sight once more. Some began pointing there way and whispering to those beside them. Others only stared forth, shrewd and angered looks plastered to their faces. A group of three children began forming snowballs and giggling as they tossed them at one another, but a plump, older, woman hurried forth and snatch up two of their wrists to drag them along. He saw Iron Tarkus, a giant amongst the crowd, moving forward, his black armor in stark contrast against the snow behind him. Eileen and Timothy came wearing the same somber looks they had in the great hall. Petrus was moving beside the crowd, pointing at them, keeping them moving. The knight of thorns and Laurentius were among the last to come sauntering out of the Archives, and Solaire could not help but think of poor Siegmeyer and what Kirk had done to him once again. He looked to Logan, but knew it was not yet the time to bring up the man's murder.

Logan was smiling as he stared out at the people, seemingly unaware of the danger he had entered into. Solaire stood close beside him, one hand resting uneasily on the hilt of his straight sword. "Firekeeper," Logan called over his shoulder. "Light the bonfire and tend to it. Quickly now. They don't seem pleased to see me. Hmmm." Light laughter came from beneath his hat.

Perhaps he is aware of the danger, Solaire thought, turning to watch Anastacia. She took a lit torch from Chester's gloved hands, knelt beside the bonfire, and whispered some words that Solaire could not make out. Then she thrust the flaming thing forward and the bonfire came alive. Abby stood beside it, staring into the flames, a slight look of trepidation on her pretty face.

"Logan... what are we doing here today?" Solaire asked.

"Buying time," Logan said, and added nothing more.

The crowd that had started out disorganized and loud, had been funneled before the platform by Petrus, and now looked like a tight-fitted glove lying before them, only a hush of whispers sounding from their many mouths now. Scowls were on many of their faces, and Solaire found himself wishing Logan had perhaps brought his golems along. If the crowd turned on them and became violent... there would be little he could do to save Logan, let alone Abby or Anastacia.

"Friends!" Logan called to them, and Solaire was impressed how loud and booming he could make his voice grow, wondering if it was some spell he'd cast clandestine. "Friends, please! Your attention! Your attention, friend! Here!"

Slowly, the crowd quieted until even the whispers came to a halt.

"Welcome," Logan began. "And let me start before going any further with an apology! I know many of you have become restless. Many of you have wondered what it is I've been doing that I've been too busy to see you, speak with you. Well, friends, I've been working very tirelessly on an answer to our problems. Today... I share with you one of the many solutions I have come upon."

A wave of curious whispers took the crowd at that, many of them turning to those beside them and fixing perplexed looks upon one another.

"My work is not yet done," Logan went on in that same booming voice. "And, I regret to inform you, I can not share the details of what that work is today."

Now a wave of displeasure was moving across the men and women. They began pointing and shaking their heads and eyeing Logan with suspicions.

"What I can do... is this," he explained, turned, and gestured to Abby.

Abby took a deep breath and nodded. She crouched before the bonfire, both Chester and Anastacia beside her looking on intently, and tossed some wood in for kindling. Then she rose and marched across the platform with her head held high, though Solaire could see she, perhaps, was trying to look a bit braver than she felt. She walked right up to Logan and forced a weak-looking smile upon him before turning to the crowd and staring out into them. The crowd was watching with silent interest; Solaire as well. Logan nodded, reached into his robes, and pulled out a dagger. Before Solaire could even question what was happening, he put it to the girls' throat and cut; her blood falling to the snow at her bare feet in a dark line as she collapsed almost instantly to her knees.

"No..." Solaire whispered, a dread befalling his heart.

Some in the crowd gasped, but most only watched on, unimpressed with the display of savagery.

"Behold," Logan said, stepping away from Abby's limp body that had fallen face first to the platform. "I give you hope, Lordran. I give you a spot of light in a world gone dark. I give you the true hero this world has awaited for too long, not the farce of a hero delivered to us before. I give you the true, the only, Chosen Undead!"

As his words rang across the gardens, Abby's body faded from the platform. Solaire could only watch in stunned silence as the bonfire Anastacia had tended to began flickering and sweltering and pulsing and then a great light erupted from within and those atop the platform had to shield their eyes from its aura. When it subsided, Abby had returned to them, her hands and feet and face as decrepit and hollow as a walking corpse. Chester moved quickly beside her and passed something between

them, which she promptly knelt and offered to the flames. After another flash, her skin had returned to its former complexion, the life rose back in her eyes, and then she stood before them as if nothing had happened to her at all.

Solaire turned slowly from Abby to the crowd below the platform. They stared forth, many of their mouths hung agape, their eyes wide and brows upturned. The whispers started not long after that, and though many words were being exchanged between the people, one word wrung out over and over. The word was: "Chosen".

"Your hero has come to you," Logan spoke to the people, and his voice carried even more powerfully now over their hushed disbelief. "Has come to me. And if I cannot save you... she will."

"Chosen..." Eileen, who'd been watching from the front of the crowd, called out and held her hands up. "Can it be? Have you come to save us? To save Lordran?"

Abby bent so her hand could reach the woman's. Their fingers locked and Abby smiled. "I have."

"Chosen..." A man further into the crowd said, speaking the word with a quiet reverence.

"Chosen," another added, moving forward.

Soon enough, they were all moving forward with their hands outstretched.

Abby, at first, looked a bit frightened, but then Logan was beside her, whispering something in her ear, and the girl gave him a confident nod of her head. She moved to the very front of the platform so that the crowd could lay their hands on her and allowed them to pull her down among them. Men and women pressed forth to glimpse upon her, to touch her, to rub their fingers in her short strands of hair and whisper their hopes. Abby walked deeper amongst them until the crowd had gathered all around her, pressing in on every side. She reached out and touched their hands and smile for them and soon enough, there were tears in her eyes. A woman plowed forth with her child, a girl of no more than four years, and handed her to Abby. Abby looked a bit startled, but she wrapped the child in her arms anyway, her clean white robes draping the young thing's body as Abby laughed. More moved near, eager to have Abby hold their own child. They stared at her, the hope returned to their eyes as they glimpsed the Chosen Undead that could end the great cold... and save Lordran.

Solaire turned to Logan. There was a wide, delighted, smile on the man's face as he watched Abby interact with the crowd that broke to laughter. You've bought yourself more time, Logan, Solaire thought, nodding and

turning back to watch Abby walk among the crowd, a babe now in her arms, a hearty laugh coming from her mouth as a man lowered himself to kiss at her bare feet. He would've never guessed that this was the same crowd from the great hall earlier hat had been so angered and eager to rebel. You've certainly bought time... but how much of it? And if your machine fails you... will you truly let the girl go? Do you see a future for Lordran that doesn't end within the dungeon of the prison tower? He faced Logan once more and watched as the man laughed and laughed and laughed.

His thoughts turned to his earlier vision: of the man in the big hat with eyes that were not his own -of red eyes, demon's eyes, that pierced into you soul... that stole all of your hope.

Chapter 20

Sen's Fortress towered above the path North; a black, looming, finger of stone that protruded from the treetops around it to point to the pale sky above, as if threatening the Gods themselves. The clouds around it were purple and swollen and raining a soft fall of snow and ice. Lautrec watched them as they swirled and danced, imagining the thunderstorm that would be brewing if the weather hadn't taken such an unnatural turn to cold lately. In Carim, the older knights used to warn that a storm on the day of a new journey was bad luck; an omen that promised poor footing for the horses and poorer combat for the knights atop them. At least there is no horse to be thrown from, Lautrec thought, tightening his belt and shaking the morbid thoughts from his head.

Domhnall, Andre, and Sieglinde were clustered around the church steps, gathered to see Benjamin and himself off. Ben, who was bundled up tightly in a heavy brown cloak and a new pair of brown boots (courtesy of the merchant's wares) was standing atop the stone railing that spilled over into the forest below, staring northward towards the fortress the same as Lautrec. He edged forward, pinwheeling his arms to keep his balance from the long fall below. Sieglinde broke from the steps, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled the boy down, scolding him for his recklessness. Lautrec grinned. The two had gotten along like brother and sister in their short time together, and watching them reminded the knight of a simpler time in his life.

Andre pulled Sieglinde away from the boy with a hearty laugh and clapped Ben on the shoulder. "Stay sharp, boy," the blacksmith told him. "And don't waste none of those arrows I made ya, neither."

"No, I won't," Ben answered immediately. He turned to Sieglinde with a playful grin. "You just keep Sieg away from the wine, unless you want the whole Burg coming down on you from the sound of her belching."

The woman's face reddened. "Ben-!" She started, thought better of it, and moved to grab him instead. Ben laughed and sidestepped her attack, retreating back towards the church as she gave chase, laughing herself a bit.

Domhnall stepped aside so the two could go rushing off into the church, watching after them with a wistful smile, but when he situated himself again, the smile faded and he turned his eyes on Lautrec. "Knight... a word?"

"I'm not stopping you," Lautrec said, kneeling to tie the lace of his boot that had loosened; he had ditched the last of his golden armor-leaving it, with warning, in the hands of the merchant-and was instead garnished in dark leathers and woolen underclothes to stay warm.

"Eh... Andre? Could I, um, speak with him alone?" Dom asked, running a hand through his fall of shabby red hair.

"Aye," the smith said and turned to follow Ben and Sieglinde's warpath inside.

Lautrec had just finished lacing his boot when Domhnall's shadow fell over him. He rose to face the man and furrowed his brow, pulling his new gloves a bit tighter to his wrist. "Speak your piece, merchant."

Dom bit at his lip and lowered his gaze to his own boots. "Um... I guess this is it then, huh?"

Lautrec cast a shrewd look upon the man before him. "Clearly you have something to say, Domhnall. So say it."

Dom looked back up at him. "Lautrec... I know Andre and Sieg think killing Logan is the most important thing in the world right now. Saving the children, too. And they are important, certainly. Sieg also wants her father found. Ben... the kid's probably just looking for some adventure to be had. If I had to guess... I'd say you are most intent on finding Anastacia of Astora, and... settling your debt."

The merchant let the words linger there, apparently awaiting a response. Lautrec did not give him one, only held his eyes darkly on the man, awaiting whatever was to come next.

"But you must realize," Domhnall went on, "that all of this is for nothing if harm should befall Abby. If she lives, and I'm nearly certain she does, you must make it your priority to see her safe. To take her away from the Archives if she's there... even if it is against the girl's will."

Lautrec's frown deepened. "If the girl does, in fact, live... why would-"

"Logan is a very persuasive man," Domhnall interjected. "He has methods of... turning the mind on to things in a very alluring way. That not only goes for the girl, but for you as well. Heed my warning, knight: if you should come across Logan, kill him immediately. Don't let him talk. Just... just end it, alright?"

"Logan has no power over me," Lautrec snapped, tiring of the conversation.

"He will use that hubris of yours against you, Lautrec, trust me. I've seen strong-willed men fall under his spell as simply as a child. Merely being in his presence is like being slightly detached from the world... like... like living in a waking dream."

"You speak as if you were regular old pals with the man... and yet you stand here in defiance of him," Lautrec pointed out, narrowing his eyes on the merchant. "And you suggest that I cannot?"

"You have anger in your heart, knight," Domhnall persisted. "He will sniff that out and use it. Please. Don't speak with him. Just kill the madman."

Lautrec sighed and began double-checking his shotels nestled in their sheaths at his hip. "I make no promises."

Dom's hand reached out and took hold of his arm, yanking at it to pull his gaze back. "This is no matter to take lightly, knight. For Abby's sake... for Lordran's sake... save the girl and kill the madman and be done with it."

Lautrec's eyes moved from Dom's face to the hand gripped around his upper arm. "Perhaps you think us better friends than we are, merchant," he said, injecting just a bit of menace into his voice as he glared at the man. "Just because we've shared meals and laughs over the last few days doesn't mean I won't hurt you. It would be wise to remove your hand."

Some of the anger melted from Domhnall's face and he swallowed as his grip came loose. "...and you're a cold man..." he said in a quiet voice. "...Logan will use that against you too."

"Enough about Logan," Lautrec said, shouldering past the man to stand before the path North; the path to the fortress. "Go get the boy. I'm ready to leave."

The five of them said their goodbyes there on the church steps a few moments later, Ben and Sieg hugging, Lautrec and Andre shaking hands, and Domhnall watching with his arms folded and an anxious look plastered to his face. Ben fell in line beside Lautrec, who gave him a nod, and then they were off; the boy turning back one last time before they descended the stairs leading down and out of the Parish to wave farewell. They were halfway to the big building that housed Andre's former smithing quarters when Ben quietly said, "Sieglinde begged me to remind you about her father."

"They all want something, don't they," Lautrec answered, and to that, Ben had no reply.

The smith's quarters were as empty and abandoned as they'd been during the many passings the boy and himself had made before and after hunts. The wood floors and steps made hollow, bouncing, sounds of their footsteps off the high ceiling, but then they were quickly on the middle- tiered level and stepping back out into the cold, to the long, stone, bridge that pointed North.

Sen's Fortress stood before them, waiting. The stone monster loomed up into the sky like some ancient beast; its towers climbing up around it in tight clusters, its gaping entrance a dark, chilling, thing peering into its belly. Snow whipped around the fortress, and when the icy winds picked up, the swirling display of white washed away the very top levels of the structure, cutting it in half, yet somehow painting it even moreominous.

Ben walked forward a bit and craned his neck back to take in the sight of it. "Geeze... It's so big. It's... terrifying."

"Come," Lautrec said, nudging the boy in the back to get him moving again. "Standing here won't make it any less frightening."

They pulled up their cloaks to shield their necks and faces from the biting winds that raked the long, stone, bridge leading up to the fortresses entrance, moving as quickly as they could with their shoulders lowered and their boots trudging through the heavy snow underfoot. The bridge was, thankfully, not very long and soon enough Lautrec lifted his eyes and found they'd made it before the stairs leading in. Ben's head was still lowered when his foot caught the first step, and he tumbled down to the snow with a yelp. Lautrec bent forward, snatched up his elbow, and pulled the boy to his feet to lead him inside.

They crossed beneath the half-drawn portcullis whose metal teeth loomed overhead, threatening to chomp down upon them, and the winds dyed off immediately, leaving them in a suffocating silence. The fortresses' front chamber was a wide room with stone pillars, a few shattered pots, and little else. Lautrec crouched to shake the snow free from the bottom of his boots as Ben stepped forth, eyeing the walls and ceiling with a look of wonder upon his face. "This is it then... Sen's Fortress?"

"That's right."

"And you know the way up? You've been here before?"

"Yes," Lautrec said, and after a moment's thought, added, "In another life." Ben raised an eyebrow at that, but Lautrec ignored it and rose back to his feet, pointing forward. "The fortress is, actually, fairly straight forward. We can reach the top before dawn if the Gods are good."

Ben nodded, looking up at the ceiling again. "And what if we run into this 'Havel the Rock'? I've never heard of him, but you seem to know a good bit about him. What should I know?"

That if we do run into him, Lautrec thought, it likely means our lives. "He's a big man," he said instead, "with heavy armor and a heavier shield. Hell of a thing to penetrate. He likes to swing around a dragon's tooth. You ever seen one?"

"No."

"Well... it looks like what it sounds like," Lautrec went on. "If he takes you below the waist with the thing, you'll never walk again. Above the waist and your ribs will shatter. Higher than that... you'll likely lose your head."

The boy's mouth had fallen agape, his eyes frozen wide apprehensively. "Well that... sounds bad. What are we supposed to do if we have to fight

him when every hit of his weapon can break us in two!?"

"Don't get hit," Lautrec said and gestured for Ben to follow as he walked deeper into the fortress.

The main chamber of Sen's Fortress was, by far, the most breathtaking. The walls stretched up to form a narrow canyon of stone, the top of which spilled out to the cold world outside, the bottomending in a pool of filthy water and bones and rats. Lautrec stepped before it with Ben awestruck at his side. The thin walkway that cut across the length of the room awaited them. It usually housed enormous blades that swung overhead, five-ton iron guillotines looking to split anyone foolish enough to misstep beneath them in two, but now they lay dormant, their hulking bodies of metal cluttering the path as if in barricade.

As Lautrec walked forth to examine the things, Benjamin spoke over his shoulder, "It's so quiet in here."

"Without the traps running it is," Lautrec agreed, stepping out onto the walkway and kneeling to run his hand along the first guillotine. "There's enough room to crawl under," he told Ben, pointing to the narrow gap beneath the massive blade. "The things are still sharp, though. I wouldn't try to stand too quickly or you're like to cut yourself in half."

Ben nodded, stepping to the edge of the walkway and breathing warm breath into his cupped hands.

"Follow close behind me."

Lautrec began lowering to his belly when Ben called to him, "Lautrec..." He froze and turned back to the boy. "I just... I wanted to say thanks. For, you know... not leaving me this time."

"I'm not paying you a favor, boy. I need your help."

"I know," Ben went on. "But... I don't know. You've taught me a lot of stuff over the last few days with hunting and skinning and correcting the flaws in my archery and everything. I haven't felt this good in a long time. So, I guess, just... thanks."

"That's what worries me," Lautrec muttered and began lowering to his belly again.

"You said that before," Ben halted him again. "What does that mean? Is there something you're not telling me?"

Lautrec turned to the boy once more. Ben's face was dark in the shadowy blanket of the fortress walls, his beard still lightly dusted with frost, his brow furrowed shrewdly. He's close enough to a man to know the truth of it, Lautrec thought with a sigh. "The witch... the witch had a theory."

"Quelana?"

His thoughts turned briefly to her face, pale and sharp-featured and beautiful. "Yes. She thought that maybe since you and Abby are both Chosen Undead who came to Lordran at the same time, that perhaps... perhaps you are linked."

"Linked?" Ben echoed, stepping forward. "What does that mean?"

"I've thought a bit on it since she told me that day. I believe she's right. The two of you... you share more than just being Chosen. You look similar. You must be close to the same age. There are similarities in your personalities and your mannerisms. Even your names have an odd duality to them. Abby and Benjamin: 'A' and 'B'? It's as if the Gods sent us a choice to Lordran instead of simply a way."

Ben frowned, bemused. "So... what does my health have to do with any of that?"

"The witch also thought that perhaps you two are joined in a sort of pulley system. As in, when one of you grows stronger, the other weakens. Her theory proved true at the start of this mad journey, when you two were together. You were terribly sick those first few nights out of the Asylum when the girl was lively and exuberant and growing strong with pyromancy. And now... your strength is flourishing. It makes me wonder... makes me wonder what has become of the girl."

Ben was quiet then for a while, his hands rubbing at his beard, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Finally, he asked, "Why didn't you tell me this earlier?"

"Does it change anything?" Lautrec asked.  
Ben thought on it, shrugged, and answered, "No." "Then what does it matter? We are-"

A scream came thundering up from somewhere deep in the fortress, so thick with pain and anguish and terror, it crackled with distortion. It was shrill and it was deep. It was human and it was inhuman. It was everywhere... and it was nowhere.

Ben was trembling where he stood. Lautrec's breath was caught in his chest, his own heart pounding in his ears as the haunting noise played in his memory on repeat. Then- something exploded, a deep rumbling tremor coursing through the entire fortress.

"We turn back," Ben whispered, eyeing the doorway they'd come from. "W-we go b-back, Lautrec. We can still go back. We'll come another day. We-"

"Shut up," Lautrec snapped, listening for movement. He could heard the distant thumps of heavy footsteps marching through the fortress. They seemed to be wrapping around a staircase, or perhaps moving in a circle. He closed his eyes and followed them, above, then to the side, then above again. Finally, he listened as they moved to the opposite end of the chamber; the chamber that they were currently in. "Lay down on your stomach. Slow."

"What?"

"Right now. Do it."

Ben's face had turned as white as the snow in his beard, but he listened. He knelt and extended two, shaking, arms to the stone floor, lowering himself until his chin was pressed against it. Lautrec had done the same, angling his body so that he could peer beneath the hanging guillotines and stare down the narrow bridge leading to the opposite end of the chamber. Boots appeared in a dark doorway there, grey and steel and heavy.

"What do you see?" Ben whispered.

Instead of answering, Lautrec held up a fist to silence the boy. The boots hesitated only slightly in the doorway and then began stalking forth onto the bridge - heading their way. "Curse the Gods," Lautrec muttered and slowly moved a hand to the hilt of one of his shotels. The boots thump - thump -thumped along the bridge before coming to a sudden halt. Lautrec held his breath, watching them in complete silence.

A faint whimper came from the boot owner's direction. The sound was followed by a grunt and then another quake of an explosion. Lautrec watched as part of the bridge was swept clean away by the arching path of a dragon tooth's swing; massive chunks of stone sailing loose and raining down to the murky waters below to land in disorganized plops amidst the waters. Havel, Lautrec thought. He's as mad as they say. Havel whimpered, as if in pain, and stomped his booted feet atop the walkway, turning in a semi-circle to his left, then to his right. He made a sound that may have been an attempt at a scream, but choked it off before it truly began, turned on his heel, and made a mad sprint back the way he'd come from. Lautrec listened as his thumping bounded through the fortress, trailing, thankfully, away from them.

"What in Izalith was wrong with him?" Ben whispered when the footsteps faded entirely.

"A madman is a madman," Lautrec said. "Tis a waste trying to decipher their ways. Come on."

"Come on!?" Ben snapped. "Are you mad as well? We have to turn back, Lautrec! We-"

"-don't have as much time as you think," Lautrec finished for the boy, and without waiting for further conversation, lowered to his stomach and began worming his way forward beneath the first guillotine.

The going was slow, both because of the row of guillotines that needed to be crawled beneath as well as the periodic pauses Lautrec made them take when he thought he heard Havel's thundering footsteps storming back their way. They came upon the missing sect of bridge a bit past the halfway point and had to stand to hop across it; the plunge to the water, and their likely deaths, below awaiting a misstep greedily. The arduous trek to the other end of the chamber went thankfully unplagued by Havel's return. When they were across, the winding stone halls and stairs of the fortress awaiting them beneath an arched passage, Lautrec stood and helped Ben to his feet behind him. The boy's face had lost all of its early-morning daring now that they stood together in the lion's den, the threat of death around every turn as real as the noses upon their faces. Lautrec grinned. "Bit different being on an adventure than simply reading about one, isn't it?"

Ben had ignored him, opting instead to stare warily around the chamber they'd passed through, clutching to his dagger's hilt at his hip. "If that thing charges us here..."

"There will be no retreat and no room to maneuver," Lautrec confirmed. "So let's be on our way."

They followed the dark hall around a bend and up a flight of stairs that spilled to another bridge, although this one was much shorter than the first. It was lined with guillotines, like its longer twin below, and the two of them had to drop and crawl once more.

"Where did that madman go?" Ben whispered as they crawled. "This seems to be the only way forward. We would've seen him if he crossed here."

"Even I don't know every secret this place holds," Lautrec admitted as they neared the end of the bridge. "There's likely hidden passageways."

The room beyond was small and tight with only two, visible, entrances coming and going, and so Lautrec halted the boy and took a moment to orient himself. He could still visualize the climb, the bridges and walkways, the bolder traps and elevators. If everything was shut down, they could make good time. Ben's breath was coming loudly from the boys mouth as he paced anxiously about the room. He moved to an empty chest at the far wall's center and prodded it with his boot. "Who would leave treasure here?"

"It was bait for a trap," Lautrec said, pointing to the hole in the wall directly above the emptied chest.

Ben winced and sidestepped quickly from the hole's trajectory. He moved near to the indentation and traced the rim of it with his finger before moving on to a cluster of statues gathered in the corner of the room.

"I know these guys," he said. "They're modeled after the knights of Anor Londo. There were pictures in our history books."

"I think I know the quickest way," Lautrec said, nodding. "Come on. If I remember correctly there's a shortcut..." His words lingered and fell away when he caught the oddest sight in his periphery. He turned to face Ben and narrowed his eyes on the boy's shoulders, where a strange, liquidy, ooze was sliding off the boy's cloak mantle.

Ben noticed him staring and frowned. "What?"

Another drop landed beside the first. Lautrec traced its origin upwards, to the rafters of the room. In the corner, hunched down in a shadowy nook, Havel was watching them. Lautrec saw, with horror, that his helmet was off and that his eyes were missing; gouged clean out of their sockets, leaving two, scarred, patches of flesh in their place. The man's mouth was twisted into a maniacal grin, drool dripping from the corner to fall to Ben's shoulder directly below. Beneath his heavy breaths, he giggled: a madman's giggle, soft and uncertain and anguished.

"Cross the room," Lautrec croaked from his suddenly-dry throat and gestured Ben forth. "Cross right now. Right now."

Ben, too young and too inexperienced to obey, turned his head back to follow Lautrec's stare.

Havel pounced.

The room came alive with the heavy landing of the man's feet driving into the ground. Ben had rolled forward at the last moment, Havel's greatshield nearly taking off his head in the process. Ben scrambled forth to his feet and Lautrec wasted no time grabbing and shoving him through the nearby doorway. Havel screamed, pulled up his dragon's tooth, and wrenched it back over his shoulder. Lautrec did not stick around for the rest.

He had only just dashed outside the room when the wall behind him shattered apart like a pane of glass, chunks of stone rocketing past his shoulder in an explosion of chaos. One chunk clipped his shoulder, but his adrenaline was pumping too hard to feel the blow. Instead, he lurched forward to snatch up Ben's arm and pointed the way up a long, steep, inclination that would lead-if memory served him correct-to the boulder room. "Go! There! Now!" Lautrec barked, and this time Ben did not hesitate: he ran, scrambling down a short flight of stairs to leap up and climb to the inclination. Lautrec stole a glance back towards the room and saw Havel peering out from the hole he'd birthed in the wall with a

twisted smile on his face, his blind eyes scrunched together in a rage. He charged forth.

Lautrec, out of time, leapt the gap down to the inclinations base. Ben had already climbed it, and when he landed, the boy's hand was extended and ready to aid him. Lautrec took it, allowed himself to be pulled upwards, and broke to a sprint as the THUD of Havel landing behind them bellowed into the curved walls. The man screamed, something exploded, and then his thumps were giving chase.

Ben, younger and more agile, outpaced him up the inclination. By the time Lautrec had caught up with him at its top, he was red-faced and panting, but he had gotten it right: they were in the boulder room. "There!" Lautrec shouted, pointing out a narrow passage in the room's corner. Ben nodded and hurried off. Lautrec rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath and watched as Havel made the climb up towards them. Fight him here, a voice told him. The man wears no helmet. Fight him here and take the mad head off of his mad shoulders. He reached for his shotels.

"ARGH!" Ben's scream wailed from the passage Lautrec had just sent him down.

"ARRGHUAAAAHEEE!" Havel screeched, possibly trying to mimic the boy's pain, and his mad smile widened as he bounded forward with even more haste.

Lautrec released his shotels and darted off to see what had become of the boy. He found Ben in the next room, a crossbow bolt protruding from his left arm as he pressed against the wall, sucking air through his grit teeth and grasping at his wound. Lautrec didn't need to ask what had happened. His eyes moved to the opposite wall, where another hole was etched, a trap that was, apparently, still active.

"We have to keep moving," Lautrec told him.

Ben pushed off the wall, wincing with the effort, but nodding his head in agreement. "Right."

The doorway they'd passed beneath splintered apart as Havel's dragon's tooth drove across it, crumbling the stone foundation around its trim and busting up the wall beside it. Lautrec grabbed the boy's unwounded arm and pulled him along in a sprint. The fortress halls wrapped and wound and eventually spilled them out to another bridge. Massive guillotines like the ones from downstairs swung back and forth overhead, still in operation, and Lautrec cursed as he pulled Ben to a halt before them. "Alright, watch me. Do as I do," he said, stepped to the edge of the bridge, and waited.

Swing, the guillotines came rushing by, a chilly sweep of air

accompanying them.

Swing, they came a second time, the short gap to cross beneath them clear to Lautrec.

Swing, they came a third time and he kicked off his heel, dashing as fast as he could to the far end of the bridge.

He made it just in time to feel that cold air brush the back of his neck. He turned, catching his breath, and signaled Ben to do the same.

Ben stepped forward as confident as the the boy could clearly muster and eyed the guillotines, his hand still pressed to his wounded arm. He watched as they came once, twice, and-

-before the third time came, Havel appeared behind him, dragon's tooth clutched in his raised arms above his head. Ben looked back, yelped, and stumbled forth onto the bridge. He's dead, Lautrec thought. But the boy lived. He tumbled to his hands and knees, but between two of the swinging guillotines. He was just thin enough to stand before they took him in two and wobble forth on shaky knees to pass by the next two. He nearly walked right into the last blade, but caught himself on the tips of his toes, losing his balance and spilling forth just as the blade was making its return trip to end his life. Lautrec caught him and shoved him against the wall to still him.

"Your bow," he commanded.

Ben looked puzzled for only a moment before he reached around and yanked the bow from his back. Lautrec took it and shouldered it immediately, eyeing the far end of the bridge where Havel had stepped to and was now glaring across the path hatefully from the blind pits of his eyes.

"Arrows," Lautrec demanded calmly.

Ben ripped his quiver loose and handed it over. Lautrec fasted it to his belt.

"Follow those stairs up and around the bend. There is another bridge. Take it and go right at its end. That will take you outside. Wait for me there." Ben opened his mouth, but Lautrec anticipated him and hastily repeated, "Wait for me there. Now!"

Ben took off running.

Lautrec pulled an arrow from the quiver and nocked the bow at his shoulders, drawing the line tight and taking a deep breath to still his aim. Havel was hopping from foot to foot, licking at his lips, running his fingers along his weapon as if it were his lover. He whimpered then giggled then screamed then whimpered again; the cycle of a man with no sanity left to

him. Lautrec took aim at his unarmored head, awaited the guillotines gap, and loosed.

The arrow crossed the bridge clean, but Havel intercepted it with his greatshield at the other end.

Lautrec cursed and nocked again. Is he blind or not? It's impossible to tell. He was ready to loose again when Havel roared a warcry, wrenched back his weapon, and swung it forth with such force, Lautrec felt the gust of wind all the way across the bridge. The dragon's tooth collided with one of the guillotines and the thing screeched as metal bent and twisted and then something snapped. Lautrec watched, mouth agape, as the entire blade went sailing off its hinge, plunging to the fortresses' lower levels below.

One less guillotine to worry about, Havel crept forward from the darkness behind him; his tongue lolling about madly in his mouth as he fixed the next trap with his weapon's aim.

Lautrec loosed the arrow on the off chance it would hit, it didn't, and he dashed off to follow after Ben. The path was, as he remembered, straight forward, and soon enough he had come upon the final bridge of the fortresses' inner chambers. The guillotines here were as dormant and still as the ones on the ground level, and as Lautrec scrambled forth, he slid to his belly and crawled as quickly as he could beneath the first one before standing and breaking into a sprint up to the next.

It was as he was lowering to crawl beneath the second trap when Havel's scream of despair and contempt thundered into the room behind him. He stole a glance back and saw the man rushing forth. He came upon the first guillotine, cocked back his dragon's tooth, and smashed the thing out of his way with such velocity, it sailed into the far wall and stuck there upon impact. Lautrec clawed his way forth, inching beneath the guillotine, and eyeing down the next. He was halfway there when the room exploded with sound and he heard the trap he'd just passed beneath shatter and bend. Havel roared once more and his thumping footsteps rumbled forward.

Lautrec dove for the final guillotine, his chin painfully colliding with the stone bridge beneath it as he landed, and scrambled desperately forward to escape the madman coming up fast behind him. The trap wailed in twisting, breaking, collision as Havel smashed it to bits while Lautrec was still beneath it. Lautrec rose and stumbled forward, feeling the dragon's tooth clipping at his heels. He rounded on the corner, seeing the light of day awaiting him up a flight of stairs, and stumbled.

He collapsed to the floor, the toe of his boot tangled with the edge of the bridge, and landed hard on his bad shoulder. His head smacked the stone floor and the face of a beautiful woman appeared briefly before him, one moment it was Anastacia, the next Quelana, the next Abby, and finally - it

was Havel.

The mad man loomed above him, the blind sockets of his eyes fixed down upon Lautrec with twisted delight. He chomped at his teeth, as if biting some unseen stalk of contempt. He shook out his thinning hair and giggled, smiled, whimpered, screamed, screamed, screamed.

Lautrec dug backwards on his elbows to escape the man, but his world had gone fuzzy from his head's collision, and whatever injuries he'd sustained when he'd been thrown from that bridge so long ago had reawakened with a vengeance. He could barely move.

"AAAAARGH!" Havel wailed, raising a hand to claw at his own eye as he moved forth, the dragon's tooth clutched impressively in one hand.

"What did Logan do to you...?" Lautrec whispered, letting himself fall to the stone floor in defeat.

Havel punched at his own chest, whimpered, and took up the dragon's tooth in a two-handed grip. He cocked his head sideways and drool onto his own neck.

It is a good end, Lautrec thought, resting his head to the floor. An end in combat is all a knight could ever truly ask for. Ana... I'm sorry. Though when his head laid back, he felt the floor beneath it shift slightly under his weight. He frowned and turned, his eyes scanning over the slightly raised indentation of floor beneath him.

Havel stepped forward to crush his skull-

-and Lautrec pounded the floor beside his head with his fist.

A trap, still active like the one below, sounded, and an array of crossbow bolts sailed out from a nearby hole in the wall. Havel's back arched as the three attacks took him in quick succession in the rear. He screamed a confused, hateful, sound and turned slightly to face this unknown assailant. Lautrec used the brief window to grab the hilts of his shotels and yank them free. He leaned forward and hooked the two curved blades around Havel's massive ankle, forming a cuff-like hold on the man's leg. Havel turned back to scream at him, but Lautrec dug into the floor with his legs and ripped as hard as he could. Havel's armor was too thick to penetrate, so instead of taking the foot off, his leg came up as if he'd been tripped, and the man's arms pinwheeled to regain his balance.

Lautrec wailed a warcry of his own, forcing himself to clamber to his feet, ignoring the injuries screaming at him from his body and head, and pulled one of Ben's arrows free from its sheath. Havel's mad, blind, eyes landed upon his and the man's balance returned to him.

Lautrec drove the arrow up through Havel's throat. It pierced the soft flesh there, a spray of bright, red, blood spilling loose immediately, and

came popping out beside the man's nose. Havel's mouth moved up and down like a fish's, his eye sockets shook with what might have been fear, and then he made a chocked, gurgling sound and went limp.

He fell to the floor, dead, and rolled off the edge to spill the two-hundred foot drop down to the base of Sen's Fortress, where he came to a satisfying plop in the waters below.

Lautrec bent, snatched up his shotels, and sheathed them. He leaned out over the edge and stared into the dark abyss below. Rest now Havel the Rock. He spat, clutched to his wounded shoulder, and limped out of Sen's Fortress.

The day's light outside was so blindingly bright, Lautrec had to shield his eyes as he stepped into the cold snowfall and howling winds that wrapped the fortresses' rooftop. "Ben?" He called, but no answer came. Curse the Gods what now? he thought and rounded the corner to climb a short flight of stairs.

At the top, he made it two steps forward before movement caught his eye. He halted, lifted his head-hand still hovering atop his brow for shade-and squinted forth to the raised section of roof before him.

Ben was there on his knees, a gag in his mouth, a dagger held to his throat.

Holding the dagger was Patches, and crowded around him on either side were two fat men in heavy plate armor and a grinning woman with bright red pigtails. She held a bow shouldered before her, an arrow nocked and pointed at Lautrec.

Patches lives, Lautrec thought bitterly, raising his arms skyward in surrender. And now the Hyena has gathered himself a pack.

...how unfortunate. 


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 21

The darkness was comforting, and in a way, Quelana felt closer to home than she'd been in a long time. The tunnels burrowing through, what she assumed was, the Duke's Archives were a black tangle of passages, some leading up slopes, some curving around bends and twists, some coming to dead ends, and yet others opening up to branch off to even more tunnels. If if wasn't for her pyromancy, the way would be as black as charred rock, and she would likely never find her way out, but her flames provided enough light to guide her feet. She held her hand outstretched before her, commanding her fire to leap from the tips of her fingers and show her the way as she walked; ever deeper into whatever strange passage the men she'd burned had brought her to.

They had given pursuit for a while, but they were many and she was one and soon enough she outpaced them, listening as their voices became distant chatter fading away behind her and then it was only her and the darkness and the quiet hum of her pyromancy's burning flames. She had had enough time to consider why, exactly, they had taken her in the first place, deciding that it must have been to remove her from Abby. She could only hope now that the girl was safe, and that Quelana would find her way back to her. Before it's too late, she thought, stepping carefully around a sharp turn in the tunnel.

She came to a short bridge, cool water gushing down from the vented walls, around it and a 'T' intersection on the far side. Quelana crossed, letting her fingers graze the water beside her, and halted. She surveyed the two paths. Where were they taking me? She wondered. Clearly they wanted me alive or they would have cut my throat as I slept. So where did they want to stash me? The two passages, as many of the passages had before them, looked identical. Quelana shook the sleeve from her wrist and held up a hand, commanding a thin stream of flame straight up from her index finger. It rose and wavered, shuddering to the left. She quelled it and went right, tracing the origin of the faint wind that carried through the dark.

Quelana walked on like that for quite a while, repeating her small pillar of flame at every intersection she came across. The tunnels were markedly the same, save for the flow of air that pushed her fire more severely in one direction at each crossing, and after a half dozen more turns, she was convinced she was nearing the end of... well, whatever the tunnel ended in.

The end turned out to be a steep drop into a black, gaping, hole that came so abruptly after one final turn, Quelana nearly walked right into it. She gasped and pulled her foot back at the last moment, her heel sliding out on a smattering of pebbles. They rolled off the edge and plummeted into the hole, clicking and clacking off the curved walls as they fell. If there

was a bottom, she did not hear them land against it. She sighed and ignited her pyromancy just enough to cast the upper rim of the hole aglow. She leaned forth and peered into it, then raised her gaze upwards. There, protruding from the wall and shining against her fire, a ladder rung awaited. Quelana frowned and sent a lick of flame upwards. It rose, revealing a whole row of rungs leading upwards.

What madness is this? she thought as the flames dyed away and the blackness returned. Who would set a ladder above such a drop? It would be suicide to... That's when she had it. The ladder was never meant to be taken in descent. It was a trap. The only safe passage was to climb it from where she stood. Quelana took a breath, lit a flame to light the way once more, and reached forth. Her hand found the rung, the pale knuckles fading to an ever fairer shade as she gripped it tightly, and pushed off the ground.

For one, dizzying, moment she hovered there suspended above a drop that could very well drop for an eternity. Then her free hand found the rung beside her first and she took a firm hold of it. Her legs and feet dangled beneath her until she planted them into the wall and wrestled her way upwards, grasping at the next higher rung above. Soon enough, her boots landed on the first rung, and then the ascent was easy-going.

She climbed in the darkness, too afraid to loose a hand and cast a flame to light her path, for a long time, and as she rose, she could feel a cool air pressing against her brow, and the distant sounds of thumping rumbling into the walls. Her hands moistened with a cold sweat and her breath grew shallow and Quelana realized she was terrified of whatever awaited her. The dark had slipped around her like an old friend, and it would be difficult to cast it aside one again. You will not flee, she told herself. You will not abandon Abby as you did your sisters. Not ever.

Her hand reached upwards and the knuckles rapped against something cold and smooth and Quelana halted: she'd come to the end. She got a firm stance on the ladder and leaned her back against the wall behind her before removing her other hand and planting it beside the first. She shoved upwards, grunting with exertion. For a moment, nothing happened and Quelana's heart fluttered madly in her chest at the thought of another dead end, then something clicked loose, like a stiff joint freeing in its socket, and the stone beneath her hands shifted.

A rush of cold, but wonderfully fresh, air raked past her and Quelana pulled a deep breath of it, closing her eyes and forcing herself calm. The stone above slid back on its own, as if pulled by some hidden mechanism, and Quelana cast her gaze upwards, where a pale blue light was bathing whatever room awaited in a soft, cool, glow. With little else left to do, and a stubborn determination not to turn back, she climbed out.

The room above was small and unused, chipped stone walls, a low- hanging and undecorated ceiling, and a stack of barrels all around the

secret hatch she'd climbed out of were all that greeted her. Quelana wrapped her arms around her body, settling in to the new, much more open, surroundings, and glanced back to the hatch. She knelt to slide it close, but as her hand grazed it, it slid shut on its own, the ground around it growling with the effort. It closed with a definitive slam, and Quelana felt another wave of trepidation come across her; she doubted she could go back now. I am a strong flame, she told herself, a saying her sisters had taught her when she was very young. A strong flame does not waver.

The first thing Quelana did was strip herself free from the cumbersome human clothing the knight Lautrec had forced upon her. It was heavy and restrictive, the boots loud and clumsy, and she was happy to rid herself of them, stashing them neatly behind one of the barrels. She had kept her robes, the thin, loose things that they were, tucked away beneath the lace of one of the boots, and slipping it back around her slender frame and flipping the hood over her head was even more comforting than the darkness below had been.

She stalked forth towards the bend in the small room, her bare feet pressing as silently as raindrops on the cool stone floor, and wrapped herself to the wall, coalescing with the shadows there and taking great relief in the sense that she could move and hide once more as she once had in Blighttown.

The room ended right around the bend in a section of wall that had been removed. In its place, long and thick steel bars drove from the ceiling to the floor, barring the room off and leaving only a small, arched, door as passage. A prison, Quelana thought. I've led myself right into a prison. She hurried forth and laid a hand upon the door. When she gave it a gentle push, it swung easily back on its rusted hinges and Quelana breathed easy again.

Outside the cell, a room so enormous and maddeningly encompassing, Quelana stumbled back inside gripping at her throat. She composed herself and stole another glance through the barred wall. She'd never seen anything quite like it: the room was no room, it was a massive chamber of curved walls, perhaps the inner spiral of some giant tower, and it stretched upwards so high, she could not see the top from inside the cell. The blue light she'd spotted from the tunnels came from torches hung in sconces along the humongous walls, their flame glowing a queer, icy, color instead of the red and orange she was accustomed to. Directly outside the room, a spiraling, wide-set, fall of stairs were wrapping their way downwards, where Quelana could hear those thumps that were sounding underground seemed to originate from.

What mad world have I stumbled upon? she wondered, glancing apprehensively around the outside of the bars. Was this where those men were taking me? She knew she had to venture outside, as difficult as it seemed, and she had just collected the courage to do so when approaching voices froze her feet in place. Quelana gasped, grabbed at

the partially-ajar cell door, and gently pulled it closed. She lowered herself to the ground and pressed against the wall, incredibly thankful she'd changed back into her robes.

The voices came drifting upwards from the spiraling staircase, and Quelana thought they sounded queerly flat, as if the walls around them carried no echo. She stilled her breath and kept motionless, listening.

"-her tongue," one of them said, the words just barely audible as whomever it was neared; he was most certainly male, though. "What's the point? Heh."

"Well, we all have our purpose in the end, I suppose," a second male voice spoke, deeper, and now drawn near enough to be heard clearly.

"Purpose... what does that word really mean when we're facing the end of all things?"

"Logan won't let things end."

"He'll certainly try. What then, though? What if he succeeds? How do we soldier forth after what we've seen... what we've done?"

The men crossed right before the cell door. Quelana pressed her lips tightly together and watched from the shadows as they walked. The one nearer to the wall was thin and tall, and the top hat resting just a tad off- center on his head made his identity clear: Chester. The other was so thick of waist and shoulder, Quelana figured he could only be the man leading the soldiers from earlier, Petrus. I'm still in the Archives, she realized with a wash of relief.

"The pardoner used to have a saying: 'All men pay for their sins.'. Suppose that means we'll have to answer for ours before this is all said and done."

"Piss on that."

One of them laughed, and then their voices began drawing too distant to make out clearly once more.

"-the last-" Quelana heard. "-for all we know-" and then finally, quietly, "- Solaire."

The last she heard after a long gap of silence was the slamming of some faraway door, and only the thumps from below remained in the cold, blue, emptiness of the tower. Quelana swallowed, rose slowly to her feet, and pushed the cell door back on its hinges again. She kept low to the floor as exited and avoided looking upwards at the enormous spin of the walls, lest she dizzy herself and loose her footing. She crept forth to the edge of the stairway and gripped tightly to its waist-high barrier before leaning her head out. The fall to the lower level wasn't nearly as maddening as the climb to the top level, but what she saw was enough to

steal her breath anyway.

The thumps were the footsteps of a small army of crystal golems. Quelana had been shown the monsters in an old book by an ever older pupil of hers from a lifetime ago, but she'd never seen one in person. The things were larger than the rock-hurling brutes in the swamps of Blighttown, a splash of blue and white crystal covered their hulking bodies like a sheet of armor, and when their tree stump-like legs took strides, their footfalls shook the whole foundation around them. Fixed in the center of the room was what looked like some great machine, and the golems were working tirelessly to lug massive cogs and plates of metal and iron bars towards it and fit them in place like a giant puzzle. Quelana forced herself still and looked to the far end of the room, where a stack of books and scrolls were mounted high around a wooden table, candles burning in disorganized clusters here and there. Behind the books the candles cast a shadow onto the wall there. It was the dark silhouette of a man's shoulders and head, an enormous, wide-brimmed, hat resting atop it.

Him, Quelana realized with a flutter of her heart. Logan!

All at once, every last one of the golems below froze in place. The shadow of the man's head rose, as if someone had just called his name. Quelana's mouth fell agape, her lip quivered, her hands trembled, then-

-the man's head returned to whatever he'd been working on and the golems resumed their duties.

Quelana nearly collapsed. What sorcery does this man possess!? She thought on as she clutched her chest in attempt to slow her thundering heartbeat.

It was a long while before she felt well enough to go on. Wherever the tunnels had led her, Quelana felt was a very bad place; a very wrong place. She debated going upwards to trail after Chester and Petrus, but wasn't sure if they were responsible for her attempted kidnapping, and doubted they'd be kind to her even if they weren't. Likely, they'd throw her in one of these cells just for approaching them. She could not turn back to the tunnels, not now after coming so far. That left the staircase downwards... closer to the golems, and to the shadowy figure of the man in the big hat. Abby trusts this man, Quelana thought. Solaire as well... but why? What has he shown them? What has he told them? Can they possibly deny the aura of strangeness that settles around him like some otherworldly fog? She couldn't ascertain an answer to not one of her many questions, and so her path became clear. Down then, Quelana thought, stepping to the staircase and surveying the descent before her. For answers... and for Abby.

It took a bit of willpower to get her feet moving, but once they had, she moved down the staircase at a steady pace, crouched low to the ground and keeping one, weary, eye over the bannister to stay vigilant for the

golems. The lower Quelana traveled, the more disconcerted she grew, but she would not allow herself to flee, and in a few minutes time, she was rounding the last of the stairs and coming upon the ground floor, where she could feel the golem's foosteps shaking up into the soles of her own feet.

She found a shadowy alcove beside an enormous pillar and pressed herself against it, leaning out just enough to spy on the monsters as they worked. Being so close to them was a terrifying experience, and Quelana counted nine of the things as they moved past her unaware of her presence. She was debating slipping around the edge of the room to spy on Logan when a soft whimpering caught her ear. She froze, listening, and traced its origin to the end of the room opposite Logan, where a wide, arched, passage led to another section of the dungeon. She waited patiently to make sure it wasn't her mind playing tricks on her in the queer atmosphere of the tower, and soon enough she heard it again, faint and soft, but very real.

Quelana licked at her lips, eyeing the passage up. It would certainly be easier to cross to it than to get around the entire room to Logan. She peeked out of the shadows again, watching as a golem lumbered right past her pillar, a big wooden cog between its arms. None of them were facing her way. Move, a voice inside her commanded, and she did.

The passage was close enough that she was only exposed in the odd blue light of those torches for a moment, but she spun inside and slammed herself to the wall anyway, holding her breath anxiously, awaiting one of the monsters to come barreling after her to crush her bones. When none did, she let the breath out and turned to face the chamber. It was long and empty, and split down the middle by a tall row of bars. A door, not unlike the cell door she'd come through earlier, was carved into the middle of the bars, and without hesitation, she moved to it and shoved it open. The whimpering was coming from behind a wide wooden bookcase beside the wall that was angled just slightly away from it, like a door ajar. Quelana frowned and moved nearer to the thing. When she'd closed the gap, she saw the bookcase was in fact a sort of door, and it had been left swinging on its hinges. This is where Chester and Petrus came from, she thought at once. They exited this hidden passage and forgot to seal it over again in their chatter. She couldn't be sure that was the truth of it, but it seemed reasonable enough.

Her hand fell upon the bookcase edge and tugged. The thing swung forth easily, and Quelana leaned forward to peer into the dark hall within. The whimpering came clearly now, and it wasn't far. She swallowed, stole one last glance towards the golems, and entered, pulling the bookcase shut behind her.

The hall inside was as narrow and tight as the tunnels underground had been. The torches here, though, glowed a more sensible shade of red, and that brought Quelana some sense of relief at least. She stalked forward,

allowing her hand to trail along the jagged, rock, wall beside her until the short tunnel ended and spilled into a wider chamber. Quelana peeked her head around the edge and saw a cell carved right into the rock, a man sitting on the floor inside with his head buried in his hands. She pressed to the wall and watched him for a moment, but a loose section of rock and dust slid loose beneath her hand. The man's head lifted and his swollen, red, eyes landed upon her.

"Maurgah!" He bellowed strangely and rose to his feet.

"Quiet!" Quelana hissed, stepping from the shadows and putting a finger to her mouth.

"Aoura aarm," he wailed, as if he'd forgotten how to form words, and grabbed at the bars of his cell.

Quelana studied the man. He skin was sallow and loose around his gaunt face. His hair was thin and brittle-looking and the rims of his eyes were unnaturally dark. He was naked except for a dirty cloth around his waist, and he stood in a hunched-over way that looked to bring him pain. His eyes darted between hers, a hint of hopeful anticipation housed within, and he made another, quieter, moan from between his lips. "Uuurma."

"What is wrong with you?" Quelana whispered, glancing wearily over her shoulder. The bookcase, thankfully, remained closed at the end of the tunnel.

The man frowned, took a breath, paused, and whimpered. He leaned his head back, his dirty hair hardly moving around his gaunt cheeks, and opened his mouth. Inside were two rows of filthy, brown and yellow, teeth, and nothing else. The man had no tongue.

Quelana suddenly heard the voice of Domhnall in her ear, speaking with Laturec as if it were still the second day they'd spent at his home in the Burg. It was the sorcerer Griggs who killed off all the firekeepers, the mad fool. Logan caught up with him, though, and stopped him before he could get sweet Anastacia of Astora. They say he keeps Griggs locked up now. Took his tongue as punishment. Aye siwmae, that's no way to live. She frowned, a surge of anger rising in her. "Griggs. Your name is Griggs."

A faint smile actually came upon the man's dirty face. He nodded eagerly, as if proud. His tongueless mouth moved to form words, but only garbled moans came out.

"You're a murderer," Quelana snapped. "You killed off the firekeepers. It was you who made sure the last Chosen Undead failed. It was you who took away his ability to return to the flames."

"Mau mau," Griggs mumbled, desperately shaking his head. Tears swelled in his eyes and his fingers trembled around the bars he grasped. He let out a long, doleful, moan and slapped his forehead against them. Quelana

fixed him with a shrewd look as he sobbed against his cell. His head lifted after some time and he swiped at his cheeks, where two clean paths trailed down his otherwise-filthy face. He raised his brow hopefully and clapped his hands together.

"What do you want from me?" Quelana questioned. She had no sympathy for the man.

"Urh," he moaned and pantomimed scribbling onto his own palm. "Uuuur!" He pleaded, holding his hands to his chest so she could see in the torchlight.

"You want to write something?"

His head nodded so frantically, his brow clipped the cell bars.

Perhaps he seeks vengeance against Logan, Quelana thought. Perhaps he can offer some insight into the man's madness. Some weakness. She fixed the man with a stern look and pointed her finger upwards, commanding a stream of flame to leap from her fingertip. He gasped and stumbled back from the bars in terror. "Keep quiet. Do you understand?"

He swallowed, nodded, eyed her finger with a mixture of awe and fear.

Quelana followed her path back out to the main chamber, slipping stealthily out of the bookcase and returning to the arched passage, where she'd spotted a spill of scrolls earlier. There were papers along every inch of the dungeon, but she had to move beneath the shadows a bit further around to snatch a quill and inkpot from a cabinet. She hurried back, stopping and waiting in the shadows every time a golem's hulking figure faced her way.

The man was gripping the bars of his prison again when she'd returned, and his face came alive with an exuberance she wouldn't have thought possible of someone in his position. She passed him the materials through the thin gap of the bars, and waited patiently as he desperately scribbled on them. A few moments later, he passed the paper back to her, nodding and smiling.

Quelana took it, folded it, and slipped it inside her cloak. The man's hopeful look faded, and a look of despair replaced it. He moaned and shook his head, pointing at her cloak. "I cannot read," she informed him. "I will see this to someone who can."

Griggs bellowed such a sorrowful groan, Quelana thought he might collapse to the floor. He didn't, instead lumbering back to the wall as heavily as the golems outside and sliding down to where he'd originally been sitting. He buried his face in his hands once more and sobbed.

Quelana watched him, unsure of what to make of the display. "You just... stay quiet. I will return if whatever information you wrote is worthwhile."

His only response was a quiet whimper into his hands, and so Quelana left him that way, heading deeper into the tunnel.

The next time the passage widened into a chamber, an identical cell awaited her. This time, however, it did not house a man, it housed the grey wolf that had come to see Abby out of the woods. Quelana gasped upon spotting the beast: he'd grown since she last saw him. The wolf padded back and forth behind the barred wall, his snout trailing before him pressed to the ground. The muzzle they'd fixed him with lay beside him, split down the seems. It didn't surprise Quelana that he'd grown out of it; the beast appeared to have maybe doubled in size. When his dark eyes spotted her, he growled and barred his teeth, shifting his paws to face her.

"I don't come as a foe," Quelana spoke to the thing, not sure if it understood, but bringing herself some peace of mind anyway.

The wolf snapped its enormous jaws shut and shook out the furry, grey, hairs around its neck. Its tail raised in the air, swatting at the walls, and Quelana was suddenly very happy that the thing was locked up. This monster is no friend of mine, she thought, watching as drool dripped from its fangs. And I don't think it's a friends of Abby's either.

She pressed on, ignoring the wolf as it snapped its jaws at her once again when she passed by its prison. The tunnel began to curve around, likely following the outer wall of the tower, and the passages between chambers was growing longer. Quelana trudged on, though, refusing to let her fear overcome her. The tunnel ended, and once again she was faced with a chamber and a cell. This time, it was a group of children locked up.

Quelana rushed to the bars and took hold of them. What cruelty is this!? She thought. There were nine of them in total, sitting at the far end of the cell on the floor, their little heads resting either against the stone wall itself or upon each other's shoulder. Their eyes were all opened, but they were rolled back into their heads and had taken on a faint, blue, glow not dissimilar to the queer torches outside. Their breathing was coming normal enough, but none of them seemed to be conscious.

This is madness, she thought. Who would do this to children!? This Logan is a monster. An insane monster. Domhnall had the truth of it. I need warn Abby... I need to get her out of here! She considered turning back there and then, but her curiosity about what other horrors the tunnel would lead to kept her feet in place. She turned from the children to the tunnel leading back to the tunnel leading deeper. Torchlight flickered from within, and Quelana thought, knowing it was mad but thinking it anway, The fire is calling to me.

She went deeper.  
The next chamber did not house a barred cell. Instead, it opened up to a

large hole carved into the floor. Quelana stepped to the rim of it and clutched to her chest as she peered inside, both terrified and intrigued to learn what horrors it held. There, beneath a row of bars, was a very tall woman with a thick fall of snow-white hair. Her arms were stretched out to her sides and chained to the walls to keep her in place, and a pair of shackles wrapped her feet. Quelana was trying to figure out what powers the woman could possibly wield to warrant such strict restraint, when she saw a tail lash out from the prisoner's rear. She gasped, and the woman looked upwards towards the noise. There was a horse's bit wedged inside of her mouth and strapped in place keeping her silent, fangs sinking into the leather bar, and horns protruding from her brow where hair would've been on a human. But this is no human, Quelana realized. This is the dragon/human hybrid. The crossbreed. This is Priscilla.

The crossbreed growled as feral as the wolf had and jerked at her chains, glaring hatefully out of the hole towards Quelana. Quelana squinted, spotting bandages wrapped around the beast-woman's arms just above the elbows and spotted with dried bits of something red. He's been drawing blood from this creature, Quelana thought with a sting of sympathy. Priscilla growled again, sinking her fangs into the bit, and ripped at her chains. Quelana backed away from the hole. She desired more than ever to turn back, but found herself planted in place once more, staring forward, staring deeper.

The next chamber housed mushroom men, like they'd seen in the Darkroot Garden. The things were sprawled out on the floor inside a cell, bandages on their arms the same as Priscilla's.

The chamber after that, she came upon a hollow soldier lying strapped down to a wooden table. His limbs were all missing, the dead flesh around his face scarred and blackened. He was conscious, though; his mouth moved up and down, no sound coming from within. Quelana hurried past him.

A bat-winged demon awaited in the next chamber; pale and thin and fanged. It was chained up against the far wall, and its wings were clipped off near to its body. The demon wailed upon seeing her, twisting its head at an unnatural angle and cawing as meekly as a baby bird.

Mother of Izalith save me, Quelana thought as she pressed deeper. What is this man trying to accomplish!? She was halfway down the tunnel when a voice called over her shoulder. Quelana gasped and nearly collapsed she was so struck with terror. She spun around and ignited her flames immediately, her heart beating a war drum in her chest.

"Quelana, no!" A man pleaded. He'd been moving quickly after her when she turned, but now that her fire was lit, he slowed to a walk.

Quelana narrowed her eyes. "...Laurentius?" She questioned, noticing that the hand holding her flame was shaking cowardly, making the fire flicker

and waver.

"Mother of Pyromancy, Daughter of Chaos, Descendancy of the Great Witch Izalith, please," he begged, stepping forth in his hooded cloak. "Do not burn me. I come as a friend." The man lowered to his knees and brought his hands up into the air beside his head. "I carry no weapon and I come alone."

Quelana's fear gave way to anger. "You despicable man!" She hissed, her flame growing larger involuntarily in her hand. "You are aligned with such a man as Logan!? A man who keeps... keeps these horrors locked up down here!?"

"No! Quelana, please! I'm not aligned with Logan!" Laurentius explained. "I serve another. Mother of Pyromancy... it was me who attempted to kidnap you from Abby's chambers."

Quelana's anger swelled. She wrenched back her arm, ready to douse the man in a bath of flame. "What did you do with her!?"

"Nothing, I swear it!" He pleaded. "I took you away from her so that Logan wouldn't get his hands on you! That is all! Listen... you saw the things Logan has locked up down here. He experiments on them! He... he would have thrown you down here as well and ran his 'tests' and you would have never seen daylight again. I got to you before that happened! I swear it, my lady! I only took you as stealthily as I did so as not to disturb Abby."

"Where is she!?" Quelana demanded.

"She is safe! We are watching over her!" Laurentius explained. "But she is... something different. The followers and myself... we fear her."

"You should fear me," Quelana snapped and threatened him with her fire once more.

"You cannot fear what you know in your heart you love," Laurentius said, and his words grew soft and quiet. "You birthed the craft I've dedicated my life to. In turns... I owe a part of my life to you. I am yours to command, my lady, but I'd beg you to listen to me. Things are going to get very bad here. And soon. Logan stands in defiance of the Gods as well as the hollow army. And, most importantly, he stands in defiance of the Order."

"The Order?" Quelana echoed. None of what the man was saying made any sense, and a rage still burned in her heart.

"I will explain once we are safe," Laurentius said. "Can I stand, my lady?" "No," Quelana snapped. "Stay on your knees and don't move."  
"As you command," Laurentius said, bowing his head obediently.

Quelana moved cautiously forward, her fire held balefully in her palm before her. Laurentius calmly watched her approach, his hands remaining in the air. She stepped in front of him, quelled her flame, and grabbed his cloak. She leaned beside his head so quickly, he nearly fell backwards. She whispered the words of her Mother, the words that took hold of the mind and commanded it as she commanded the flames; her Undead Rapport spell. A confused yelp escaped Laurentius' lips, he went stiff, then entirely limp in her grasp. His head rolled back and his eyes took on a heavy glaze.

"Do I command you?" Quelana asked.

"...yes," he muttered in a monotone.

Quelana nodded, satisfied. The spell not only put whomever's mind she cast it upon under her control, it weakened their will, making it near impossible to lie. "Is everything you just told me true?" She asked, fixing her eyes shrewdly upon his.

"...yes."

She breathed a sigh of relief. Abby was safe, and they were alone; those were good things to know. "How did you find me down here?"

"...chasing... through the tunnels... saw you... with quill and inkpot... followed..."

She thought for a moment before asking, "What is this 'Order' you spoke of?"

"...The Path of the Dragon..."  
"A covenant?"  
"...yes."  
"And what do you want with me?" "...your love..."

Quelana frowned. "What does this order want with me?" "...to see you safe... to the true God of Lordran..."  
"And who is that?"  
"...the Everlasting Dragon..."

Quelana knew very little of covenants or dragons. She held Laurentius' head up as it threatened to tumble to his chest. "How many of you are here in the Archives?"

"...five..."  
"And how many outside the Archives?" "...three..."

Eight of them... a sad excuse for a covenant, she thought, holding her gaze on his heavy-lidded eyes. But if they could protect Abby... see her away from this mad man and his mad castle... "Are you willing to take Abby and myself away from here?"

"...yes..."

Quelana nodded; she'd spent about as much time as she wanted to in this insane dungeon of Logan's. She reached inside her cloak and pulled out Griggs' letter. "Can you read?"

"...yes..."

She handed him the letter. "Read it to me."

His head drooped forward so his eyes could land upon the paper. He began reading in the dry, monotonous, tone her spell had left his voice in, "...Logan lies.. I didn't kill off the firekeepers... Logan did... he is obsessed with immortality... doesn't want Lordran saved... will stop at nothing... save me... kill him..."

Quelana's breath was caught in her chest, her mouth agape. She shook Laurentius' shoulders. "Is that all?"

"...no..." the pyromancer said and read on, "it says... at bottom... don't stay here... long... Logan can... feel a person's... presence..."

"Feel a person's presence?" Quelana questioned. "What does that-"

Footsteps approached from the hall over Laurentius' shoulder, coming their way; coming fast.

"Get up," she hissed, and pulled Laurentius to his feet. "And follow me as fast and hard as you can."

"...yes..." He nodded.

Quelana turned, and with nowhere else to go, sprinted off deeper into the dungeon, Laurentius at her heels.

Chapter 22

Patches unsheathed a wing-tipped spear and sauntered forward to place the sharpened tip to Lautrec's throat. The bald man grinned, and when he did, Lautrec saw his mouth had acquired a few new gaps where the teeth should have been. Patches snorted, spat to the stone floor between them, and asked, "How do you do it?" and when the knight did not answer, added, "Last I saw of you, old friend, you were bleedin' out from my dagger's hole in your side and sailing off a bloody bridge! So tell me: how do you do it? How do you keep on living."

"Perseverance," Lautrec answered.

Patches frowned. "Seems a bit of a simple trick, ain't it?" He pushed the spear tip just a tad deeper into Lautrec's throat; a thin trickle of blood breaking the skin there.

Lautrec did not waver. "I find the simple tricks work best."

Patches frown deepened and his lips pulled back in a snarl. His knuckles went white around the handle of the spear and he cocked it back, taking aim at Lautrec's throat.

"Patches..." the deep voice of one of the two fat men accompanying him called over his shoulder, and the words seemed to, at least, give hesitation to his actions. "Calm yourself. We're going inside."

Patches' hands shook and his face contorted into an ugly mix of hatred and longing, but he eventually lowered the spear from Lautrec's throat. "Well you heard him," he snapped, stepping behind the knight. "Move your ass."

The four of them-Patches, his two heavy-set friends and the red-headed woman-had apparently made a little encampment for themselves atop Sen's Fortress. Lautrec and Ben, gagged and bound at the hands and waist beside him, were led across the snow-caked walkways hovering high above the fortresses' lower level, marched up a lengthy flight of stairs that angled around a tower halfway up, and shoved beneath a doorway that opened to a small room with wooden floors and archer slits carved into the stone walls. Patches drove the blunt end of his spear into the back of Lautrec's knees, collapsing him, and the red-headed woman laughed with twisted delight upon grabbing Ben by the back of the neck and dragging him to the corner of the room. She shoved him against the wall there and made him kneel before it. The big men in their plate-mail armor came wobbling in after, red in the face from the climb.

From his knees, Lautrec surveyed their inventory: a sad-looking little bonfire beneath one of the archer slits; a bundle of cloth, from the top of which spilled stale hunks of bread and gaunt skins of wine; two gathered

piles of snow in the corner, one melting into buckets for drinking water, the other preserved beneath the windows, salt-cured slabs of meat lying frozen within. Lautrec wondered only briefly just what exactly they were doing here, but figured since Ben and himself still lived, they'd find out soon enough. He turned to look back at Patches, but the bald man's spear pressed to his cheek, keeping his head forward, pointing at the wall.

One of the fat men grunted beneath his own weight as he lumbered to a corner of the room and collapsed into a wooden chair there; the thing creaking and sounding ready to splinter apart beneath him. He removed his chainmail helm and filled an empty tankard with some of the melted snow water in the bucket near his feet. That's when Lautrec recognized him. "You're Nico," he said.

The big man's eyes flicked to his, narrowed, and then exchanged looks with the rest of his traveling mates. When his gaze returned to Lautrec, he was frowning. "Aye. How do you know this?"

"And your friend there is Vince," Lautrec went on. "You hail for Thorolund. You protect, well, you once protected the priestess, Lady Rhea."

A look of childish wonder came across Nico's face, as if he was bearing witness to some magic trick. "Tell me, Sir Knight, how it is you know these things?"

"The nutter thinks he's lived other lives," Patches answered for him, snorting derisive laughter. "Claims he's in some foolish 'cycle'. That's how he'll explain it. Me? I think the bastard is Logan's spy."

Nico studied Lautrec. "Perhaps he tells it true and he has seen through the lens of previous life. The Ancient works in mysterious ways."

"He ain't lived no other lives, Nico," the red-head woman snapped. "That's just stupid."

"Things only appear stupid when they aren't understood," Nico persisted. The man leaned forth to hand his cup to Lautrec. "How did you get past the Bishop Havel?"

"I didn't exactly get past him," Lautrec admitted, peering into the cup and swirling the icy water within before taking a sip. It was cold and refreshing on his throat. He lowered it, handing it back to Nico with a gracious tip of his head, before saying, "I killed him."

"He's mad," the woman laughed.

"Killed him?" The other large man, Vince, said, walking beside his friend. Vince was younger than Nico, his face pale and smooth beneath a crop of orange hair. "You're telling us you killed Havel the Rock?"

Lautrec shrugged. "His body is in the waters at the bottom of the fortress. Have a look for yourself."

Nico and Vince exchanged a look. Nico nodded and Vince begrudgingly took up his mace from a wooden table at his side and headed back outside. Nico watched him go before turning back to Lautrec. "If you tell it true, Sir Knight... we owe you our gratitude."

"Gratitude!?" Patches snapped. "Didn't you hear what I told you earlier!? This man is mad! He tried to strangle me! He only wants to murder that firekeeping wench, Anastacia, and-"

Lautrec stood so suddenly, he'd caught the room unaware. He spun, grabbed the hilt of Patches' spear, and twisted. Patches yelped, his wrist turning at an unnatural angle, and released the weapon. Lautrec gripped it two handed and thrust the bar up into Patches' throat, shoving the man back against the wall and pinning him there, his throat trapped under the spear's bar.

The red-headed woman had her bow at the ready in a flash, an arrow nocked and aimed at Lautrec's chest. Nico rose and held up a hand to stop her. "Let him go, Sir Knight," the man commanded calmly.

Patches' face was turning a wonderful shade of purple, and Lautrec thought back to the day he'd nearly killed him at the Firelink Shrine. I should have finished him when I had the chance, he thought. He pressed the spear forward harder and Patches gurgled a choked sound. "If you ever speak of Anastacia again, I will kill you, Patches. Do you understand that?" He asked.

Patches' reply was so thick in his own strangled gasps of air, he could not be understood.

"I didn't hear you... old friend"

"Enough!" Nico demanded, pulling a crescent axe from its sheath at his hip.

Lautrec pulled the spear away and Patches collapsed to the floor, grasping at his neck and desperately pulling breaths of air. Lautrec glared at him a moment before tossing the spear down beside him. He faced Nico, who was standing alert and ready with a big kite shield held before him. "There are some things you should know about Patches," Lautrec said. "He's a coward, he's dumb, and he's as callous as any man I've met. That is a dangerous combination of traits. He rode with me and my traveling companions for awhile, then betrayed me, stabbed me in the side, and threw me from a bridge. He will do the same to you, regardless of whatever reason you took him amongst you. Let me kill him now and do us both a favor."

"It isn't our place to judge the wicked, Sir Knight," Nico told him, lowering

his shield just a tad. "His judgement will come before the Ancient, as will all of ours. He is eternal and he is wise and his is the one true path to transcendence. Now seat yourself."

Lautrec's eyes flicked from Nico to the woman to Patches still gasping on the floor. His shotels were in a leather bag hooked around Nico's waistband. With no clear path to retrieve them, he sat. The tension melted from the room. They stood, watching him as if he were some wild animal for a moment, then Vince returned came waddling back into the room. His face was even redder than it had been last time as he spoke, "The knight tells it true. Havel is no more." He held up his hand, and in it was a small ring; the infamous treasure that men claimed gave the bishop his maddening amount of endurance to wear and wield such heavy arms.

Nico stepped forward and took it in his own chubby fingers, rolling it around as if to test the reality of the thing. "Father Eternal," he spoke reverently, "You really killed the man."

"His judgement came a little early, I suppose," Lautrec said, leaning back in the chair and folding his arms. "The man had lost his eyes as well as his sanity. He was attempting to crush my bones to little bits with a dragon's tooth before I stuck his throat with an arrow."

"Aye," Nico agreed. "The man was madder than Logan himself. Some souls may only find peace in their own destruction. The Ancient will forgive this sin."

"Ancient..." Lautrec echoed, narrowing his eyes on the big man before him and finally piecing together their group's purpose. "And you said 'Father Eternal' before... you're speaking of the dragon, aren't you? Down in the Great Hollow?"

"We walk his path," Vince said with a nod of his head. "As do all righteous men in these dark times. Those who will be saved at least."

"One true path," Nico added. "One true God." Both he and Vince bowed their heads reverently, and the woman was quick to do the same. Patches had clambered back to his feet and upon seeing the three of them bowing, did so himself, a quick flash of reproach on his face where the color had started coming back in. "We were heading to the Great Hollow," Nico went on when the strange moment of silence passed, "when we came across your friend. Patches warned us of your... skills, and so we took him captive to await you. We were plotting on a way to make it past Havel, but... it seems you've done that work for us. You... have our thanks."

Lautrec nodded, his eyes landing on the satchel at the man's waist. "My weapons..." he said.

"Not yet," Nico went on, "I have a proposition for you." Everyone wants something, Lautrec thought. "Which is...?"

Ben began grumbling muffled protests into his gag in the corner of the room. The woman beside him planted her boot on the small of his back and held him in place. "Shut up," she commanded.

"Be kind, Pharis," Nico told her.

Lautrec's eyes narrowed on the woman. "Pharis? You're not Pharis. I know of the great legendary archer. He's been dead for about a hundred years now." He surveyed the woman in her leather armors and her black longbow and her funny little hat resting between the bright red pigtails of her hair. "And Pharis was a man."

"I can be who I wanna be," the woman-Pharis, apparently-snapped. "Only Father Eternal can tell me otherwise, knight. Don't forget it!" And when Ben squirmed beneath her boot she turned her glare downwards and shouted, "I told you to shut up!"

Another realization was dawning upon Lautrec. His eyes moved from Ben to Nico. "Why is the boy bound?"

"'Cuz he's stayin' with us," Pharis answered for him, grinning as Ben struggled beneath her foot.

Nico sighed. "I... apologize, Sir Knight. Patches has told us what the boy is. We... cannot allow him to go any further with you right now."

Lautrec looked to Patches, whose ugly face grew even uglier with a satisfied smirk. "That's right, Lautrec. They know. And we're taking him with us. Father Forever will-"

"Father Eternal," Vince corrected.

Patches sneered. "Yes, right. Father Eternal will know what to do with the kid."

"He is Chosen," Nico went on. "We intend to find out what exactly he's been chosen for."

Ben peered up at Lautrec from the floor, a genuine look of fear across his bearded face. Lautrec sighed. "And I suppose there's no talking you out of this...?"

Nico shook his head. "We do what we do because we walk the Path. However... that is where my proposition comes. My brothers and sisters here," he said, gesturing to Pharis and Vince and Patches, "are united not only by our devotion to the Path and to Father Eternal, but by our banished status at the Archives."

"Logan caught us praying to the true God of Lordran," Vince explained. "And outcast Nico, Pharis, and myself from the castle. He claims there are no Gods worth worshiping in Lordran. He claims man is his own God."

And perhaps, Lautrec thought, he has the right of it. He held his tongue.

"We can never go back there," Nico went on. "And so our pilgrimage for the Great Hollow begins. However, there are others who walk the Path that still lie inside the castle walls that we wish to inform of our plans. And so you see our dilemma?"

"You need someone who hasn't been banished to go speak with your 'brothers and sisters', is that it?" Lautrec asked.

"Aye," Nico said, nodding his big head. "And if you do this for us... we will return the boy to you."

"Nico," Vince snapped, his brow creased in confusion.

Nico held his meaty hand up. "If the Father sees this knight there and back safely, he clearly does not wish us to have the boy. It is fair and it is just and it is what we will offer. We will wait here for three days and three nights. If you return to us, our brothers and sisters at your side, within that time... the boy is yours."

Ben looked to Lautrec, his eyes wide and apprehensive. Lautrec turned away from the boy back to Nico. "And I'm supposed to just take your word on this?"

Nico dropped to one knee and bowed his head. "I swear it true, Father Eternal judge me now if my tongue speaks falsehoods."

"Swearing to some old dragon in a lake of ash means nothing to me," Lautrec told him. "We don't share the same faith."

Both Nico and Vince's face darkened, but Nico quickly went on, "We know not every man has seen the Path as clearly as we have. We don't hold your lack of faith against you, Sir Knight, but these are dark times upon us." He grew quiet, somber, and lifted his head to the room's sole window to watch the snows dance in the wind. "We rest on the cusp of a great divide amongst the people of Lordran. It is coming sooner than I would've hoped. There are those who will walk the Path and be saved and there are those who will stand to block it and be damned." He looked back to Lautrec. "It is Logan who will lead those heathens. And it is Father Eternal who will ensure he fails. If you live to see that day, Sir Knight, who will you stand with?"

Lautrec shrugged. "Whomever is offering the most wine and women, I suppose."

Nico frowned. "You make a jest of this? Look outside these walls, Sir Knight. The end times are upon us. The cold comes and with it the darkness, looking to eclipse everything in its shroud of suffering. You will choose a side, my brother, I can only hope you choose wisely."

"And what about the Kiln of the First Flame?" Lautrec questioned, not allowing himself to be wrapped up in the man's zealous speech. "If you know the boy here is the Chosen Undead, why not help see him to the bonfire and have him light it?"

Nico shook his head. "Only damnation lies that way. We learned that with the last Chosen Undead. This is the world it left us with."

"I've been told the last Chosen failed to kill Gwyn. Perhaps that is-"

"Aye," Nico pressed on a bit more angrily. "As will all who attempt to go there. It is the way the Father wishes it. His is the only path worth walking. This isn't up for debate. I will exchange no more words on the matter."

An easy way to win an argument, Laturec thought. Refuse to have one. Again, he held his tongue.

"Find Laurentius," Vince spoke up, stepping between Nico and himself in a clear attempt to diffuse the growing tension between them. "He will gather the others. Tell him the time for our pilgrimage is now. Have him gather the followers as well as spread the word to any others whom may be unaware. There are men and women who will walk the Path once they see how clear it lies."

"The pyromancer?" Lautrec questioned. "He's one of you?"

"Aye, amongst others," Nico answered. "We all walk the Path together. We will stand against Logan and the cold and the darkness and whatever else Lordran throws at us because Father is wise and Father is eternal and Father's path leads to transcendence. One true path; one true God."

Again, the room lowered their heads in quiet prayer, and again Patches was late to join and did so with a look of disgust on his face; clearly not sharing their piety.

"Three days and three nights..." Lautrec muttered, rubbing at his chin. Can I finish my work with Anastacia, kill Logan, and rescue Abby is she still lives in three days time? He turned to Patches. "What has become of Quelana? Of Abby?"

Patches smirked. "What do you care, Lautrec?"

"Answer me."

Patches' smirk faded only momentarily before growing wider. "You want to know? The knight of thorns was so upset you defeated him on the bridge that day, he raped and killed the two of them right there on the spot. A pity. They wailed like sick dogs." He laughed.

Lautrec studied the man's face. "For someone who gets by in life by lying

and deceiving others, you never got quite good at it, did you, Patches?"

Patches smirk vanished, a sneer replacing it.

"He told us he traveled with a witch and a young woman," Nico answered the question for him. "They got split up at the Archives. Chester chased Patches here off and told him not to come back. We came across him wondering through the upper wall of Anor Londo and took him in. If one of those two woman you named is a witch, I'd presume they're alive and in the Archives."

Patches' face darkened, as if he were a child who'd just had his toy taken from him.

They live, Lautrec thought, finding it strange how much relief that simple fact seemed to bring him. He wasn't sure why he even cared: it was looking less and less likely that Abby was the answer to Lordran's problems as the days passed. "If I don't return in three days..."

"We will depart for the Great Hollow," Nico confirmed. "The boy with us."

Ben mumbled something, but Pharis was quick to give him a shake and quiet him down again.

Lautrec nodded, avoiding Ben's pleading look from his position trapped on the floor beneath the woman's boot. "Then I'm wasting time I don't have sitting here." He rose, extending his hand. "My weapons."

Nico studied him for a moment before reaching to the satchel at his hip and retrieving the shotels from within. He handed them over, and Lautrec noted both Vince and Patches' hands fell to the hilts of their own weapons. They fear me, Lautrec thought with some amusement. Outnumbered four to one and they still fear me. That's... a good thing.

"May Father Eternal watch over you, Sir Knight," Nico said, offering his hand to shake.

Lautrec acted as if he hadn't seen the gesture, shouldering past the heavy- set man instead and stepping to the doorway. He squinted outside to the high, stone, walls of Anor Londo. "Does this 'bat-winged' demon I hear about still travel the skies to the city?"

"Aye," Vince answered.

Lautrec nodded. "Then I will see you in three days time," he said, looking to Ben and giving the boy the most reassuring nod of his head he could muster. Ben sighed and slumped to the floor in defeat.

"Walk the Path true, my brother, and your footing will always fall true," Nico said, waving a farewell.

My footing would like to fall upon your rather wide ass in truth, Lautrec thought as he forced a smile at the man.

But he held his tongue; Anor Londo awaited.

Chapter 23

"This is the first sentence of the chapter," Abby read, licking at her dry lips and clearing her throat to read from the dusty tome clutched in her hands. "'Oolacile was swallowed by the Abyss, rendering the words written herein as mostly useless'. What a thing to write! It's as if the author was trying to persuade people not to read his work!" She shook her head, closing the book and turning it over to study the cover. The title read: 'Ooalicle: A History of Ruin', and beneath was a lovely printed photograph of a sprawling, green, landscape littered with trees and flowers, a mighty colosseum of stone standing tall on the horizon. A wistful smile came to Abby's face as she ran her fingers along the picture, dreaming of a Lordran that could be half as pretty.

Chester hopped from the ladder he'd been perched on and crossed the library room to her. They were in a small, secluded section that he'd claimed was 'the forbidden area' of the library to the public, and so his mask was flipped around to the back of his head. He wore a wide grin on his comely face as he neared. "That book is useless anyway," he told her, stepping around a stack of books to approach the chair she sat in and leaning on its back to get a look. "You don't need a history of Oolacile when you are in the presence of a man who's actually been there."

Abby turned in her chair to fix him with a shrewd look. "You jest..."

He snickered, leaned down so his lips were close to her ear, and whispered, "I would not tease a woman as beautiful as you, my lady."

She pulled her head away. "Stop it," she told him, but felt a smile rise on her face, betraying her words. "And Oolacile was swallowed by ash three hundred years ago. Are you a liar or are you secretly a very, very, old man?"

Chester's grin widened. He rose and put his hands up in surrender. "You've found my secret, my lady. I'm caught. I am ancient. Now you know why I'm so much wiser than everyone else." He snickered again, twisted his long, slender, frame around the back of the chair so he was beside her, and fell to his knees. "Will you swear my secret is safe with you, my lady?"

Abby raised her chin haughtily, playing along. "Perhaps. Perhaps not." "I will reward you," he said.

"You have nothing I desire you scoundrel," she told him, snatching her hand away as he made to take it in his own.

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong," he said. "I've been holding out on you, Abby. Admittedly, I am a scoundrel in that regard, I suppose, but I do

have something for you."

"If you try to kiss me again..." Abby began, casting a baleful look on him. Her eyes moved to the sharp cut of his cheekbones and to the dimple of his chin and finally his lips and she thought that maybe it wouldn't be such a terrible thing.

"I shall not," he said, "I will give you... this." He reached into his longcoat and pulled something thin and fragile looking that sparkled in the glow from the candlelight on the table beside them, but quickly moved it behind his back.

"What is that?" She questioned, craning her neck in attempt to steal a glance.

"Swear my secret is safe," he insisted," and it's all yours."

She smiled. "My lips are sealed. Happy? Show me."

A brief look of disappointment crossed Chester's face, as if he'd been hoping the game would go on a bit longer, but he held true to his word nonetheless. He revealed the item: a beautiful crown of silver, adorned with a headpiece filled with red and blue and yellow jewels that twinkled prettily in the candlelight. He twisted it so the flame caught at a different angle, and the jewels reflected onto his face.

Abby's mouth had fallen agape. "Where did you get that?"

He watched her, seeming to take a great pleasure in her surprise. "There are all sorts of treasures in these walls. All one has to do is look in the right places." His eyes rose to her forehead. "May I?"

"I... I don't think I should wear such a flashy thing," Abby said quietly, though found the task of pulling her eyes from the crown difficult. "I mean... what would that say about me?"

"It would say what it's supposed to," Chester said. "That you are a princess and that you should be treated as one." Without further hesitation, he lifted the crown to her brow and fixed the silver band around her head, sliding it beneath the short tufts of brown hair that were growing back to her. It fit as if it were made for her.

"Am I... pretty with it?" Abby asked, still unsure of wearing such an extravagant thing.

Chester stared into her eyes for a long time before answering, "The prettiest, my lady."

Abby felt blood rush to her cheeks. "Stop," she said, turning away. She moved her hands to the bands of the crown, but when her fingers found it, she hesitated in its removal. It felt... right somehow upon her. "Maybe

I'll just wear it... in here. Like the way you only show your face in here."

"I only show my face to you," Chester corrected, standing and walking beside the wall of bookshelves at the rear of the room. He held his gloved hand out and trailed his fingers along them. "Are you still stubbornly set on reading all these damned things?"

"There called books, Chester," Abby said, setting aside the history of Oolacile and scanning the shelves for something a bit more relevant. "It would do all of us some good to read one or two. And yes, I intend to read as many as I can. Perhaps there is an answer hidden away somewhere in all of this."

"If there was, believe me, my lady, Logan would have found it a long time ago." He plucked a book from the shelf, flipped through the pages, and tossed it aside. "He's likely ready every cursed tome, scroll, and book in this castle twice."

Abby stood and crossed to the far wall, standing on the tips of her toes to read off the titles of a row on a shelf just above her head. There seemed to be endless numbers of books on sorceries and spells, and almost just as many on catalysts and alchemy. She'd already started reading off the section detailing the histories of the various parts of Lordran, and was looking to move on to something perhaps about the creatures that inhabited them. There was little else for her to do. She'd given up on trying to sleep: that had become nearly impossible. When her eyes closed, the hollowed soldiers of Anor Londo filled her vision, angry and aggressive and infinite. When she did manage to drift off, the sleep was brief and poor and often ended in some terrible nightmare of demons coming into the castle windows at night and dragging her away, flying off into the swirling snows as she screamed a scream that made no sound.

She glanced to Chester beside her, plucking books at random and scoffing at their titles before shoving them back in place, and smiled, thankful for his presence. She was alone now, the companions that had saved her from the Asylum all either gone or dead. Solaire was busy training men in combat for some war Logan seemed convinced they stood on the brink of, and Logan himself would only call upon her once a day, and even then she could never remember what they talked about. She could recall his voice, the sound of it, the tone of it, but the words were lost to her almost as quickly as he spoke them, and she could never focus on what they were when she left his company, as if the entire meeting had been a dream. I wish I could sleep, she had thought after the first meeting, so that perhaps her mind would be sharp and ready to concentrate, but the sleep would not come, and so she had no choice but to soldier forth.

The books helped, but Chester helped more. She liked to watch his face as he read. He was a dreadfully slow reader, having admitted to reading less than three whole books in his life, and his comely face grew even more so when his brow creased and his eyes narrowed to concentrate on the

words. She refused to tell him, but she even liked his constant teasing and the somewhat-sarcastic chivalry that he'd labeled his 'Solaire impression'. More than anything, she was just happy to have someone with her. The castle was big and she was small and it was easy to feel lost and insignificant inside it.

"Here's a useful one," he said, pulling a book free from its shelf. "'The Art of Making Love'."

"I know you're lying," she said, smiling.

He feigned shock, acting as if he was reading the inner cover. "Oh my! It was written by... me?"

"Do you actually use these... tactics of yours on the women wherever you come from?" Abby questioned with a shake of her head, but found her smile remaining.

"I told you where I come from," Chester said, putting the book back. "And yes, I use them. They work like a charm on most women, but I suppose you aren't most women, my princess."

"Oh, don't start calling me that. Please."

"I'll make a trade," he offered, sauntering forth and fixing his dark eyes upon hers. "I'll stop in exchange for one little thing..."

Abby swallowed, her heart quickening in her chest. "Oh? What one little thing is that?" She asked, trying not to sound flustered.

"Oh, its just this... little thing," he said, stepping before her and taking her chin in his hand. She found it near impossible not to look at his lips as they moved. "Perhaps a kiss from the sweetest girl in Lordran will suffice."

"I said you can't!" A voice bellowed from outside the library room.

Abby snapped out of her daze as Chester's face darkened and he flipped his mask back around to hide it.

"Ma'am! Stop!" The voice shouted, and its owner was now clearly Petrus, who'd been roaming the outer library.

A second later, a dark-haired woman rushed into the room, a child cradled in her arms. She looked wildly around before spotting Abby and a look of relief washed over her face. "Chosen," she said, smiling and moving quickly across the room.

Petrus appeared in the doorway, sweat lining his plump brow and cheeks. "Ma'am! This section of the library is not-"

"It's okay," Abby said, raising a hand, and though she saw Petrus was not

happy about taking command from her, she also knew she had the right to give it. Logan had told them all as much after he'd slit her throat and she was reborn from the flames two days earlier. She turned her eyes on the woman and smiled. "Are you alright, Mary?"

The woman's face brightened immensely. "You... you know my name?"

Abby stepped forth to take the woman's hand. "Of course. You told me the day I was killed."

Mary laughed, but there were tears in her eyes as well. "Oh, my. I didn't... there were so many people shouting that day, I just... oh, you are sweet as they say, dear. Oh! And your crown is lovely! Breathtaking! Really!"

Abby lowered her head, chagrined. "Oh, I... this isn't really mine and-"

"It's my boy," Mary went on, seemingly unaware of Abby's discomfort. "He's sick, Chosen. I know you can't exactly heal him, but... but perhaps if you just... laid your hand upon his brow like you did for Thomas the other day?"

"Oh, of course," Abby said. A man had come to her the previous day complaining of an ache in his head that would not leave him. She had tried laying her hand on his brow and calming him the way she'd calmed the Taurus Demon at the Firelink Shrine and Lautrec at Domhnall's home, and upon doing so the man burst to tears and claimed she'd 'fixed' him. She wasn't sure if he was being truthful or not, but the people around him broke into cheers and Abby had appreciated that feeling of joy all the same.

"Thank you, sweet thing, thank you," Mary cooed and held her boy, who couldn't have been any older than three or four, up to Abby's chest.

Abby leaned forth and brushed some dark hair from the child's brow. He stared at her quietly, a mixture of confusion and fear set into his dark blue eyes. "He's a very handsome boy," Abby said, smiling at the child. She moved her hand slowly and gently to his forehead and concentrated on calming him. She thought of a still lake, and now the gentle rolling green hills of Oolacile she'd seen in the photograph joined the image. She felt a surge of warmth in her hand and in her heart and a look of serenity came across the boy. She removed her hand and nodded to the woman holding him. "I'm sorry if that doesn't help."

"No, dear, don't you apologize. You are a sweet and kind girl for doing that, and you have my gratitude." Mary's eyes fell to her son's and she smiled heartily upon seeing him drifting to sleep. "Thank you," she whispered as tears swelled to the corners of her eyes.

"Alright, enough," Petrus barked. "This is a forbidden section of the library. Do not come back here again or Logan will hear about it. Understood?" The woman crossed the room with her child, strolling right

past Petrus as if she hadn't heard him. His face reddened, but he collected himself and turned back to the room. "A word, Chester."

"I'm busy," Chester said casually, pulling another book from the shelf.

Petrus sighed. "There are rats in the walls."

Chester froze in place and Abby saw a queer look come to his dark eyes beneath the mask. He shelved the book and turned, and an unspoken exchange crossed from him to Petrus as they stared at one another. Abby looked between them, confused. Finally, Chester faced her, said, "My lady, I will be right back," and marched out of the room to follow Petrus.

Rats in the walls? Abby thought as she watched them vanish around the corner. What does that mean?After pondering the question for a moment, she decided whatever it was she'd work it out of Chester upon his return, and put the thought aside, choosing instead to pull a book labeled, 'Indigenous Life of the Swamplands', thinking of Quelana as she read the title, and returning to the big chair in the corner of the room. She lowered herself between its cushioned armrests and laid her head back, peeling the front cover open and watching as a thin trail of dust from neglect spilled out. She thumbed through the first few blank pages, but by the time she'd reached the first written page, her eyes felt heavy. She closed them with the intention of giving herself only a moment of rest, but ended up drifting to sleep almost instantly.

There were dark things outside the castle walls and when she passed the windows, she could see them peering in at her; red eyes watching hungrily, watching greedily, whispering for her to come near so that they could smother her in their arms and take her away. Men with hollow faces and six pairs of arms protruding from their bodies like a spiders climbed the outer walls of the Archives, searching for holes to crawl in and come after her. The sky outside was black, the clouds purple and swollen with disease, and in that black sky she saw figures flying near. Lightning clashed and their form took on detail: hideous, winged, demons with fangs the size of shortswords and claws that raked madly at the skies around them. They wanted her to. Underground, skeleton hounds that grew as large as the Taurus Demon had been were burrowing tunnels up beneath her feet, waiting for her to misstep, waiting to drag her down beneath the floor and carry her away. A man in Anor Londo was beckoning to her to join him, but then he was a woman, giggling madly, and then he was a man again, and then he wasn't sure, and-

-she woke in the library, trembling so violently she'd shaken herself right out of the chair she'd dozed off in. Abby grabbed at her stomach, coughed twice, and then doubled over on her knees to vomit onto the floorboards. She hadn't been eating, and only an acidic bile ripped up through her throat, awakening an immense pain there. Just stop trembling, Abby told herself. Stop trembling and you can crawl back to the chair. She balled her hands into fists and took a deep breath that felt tainted by her own vomit.

Slowly, the trembling came to a halt and she was able to rise on shaking legs high enough to collapse back into the chair. Cold sweat raced down her arms and brow, and when Abby closed her eyes, she felt the whole room spinning around her.

"Are you alright?" Chester's voice called.

She opened her eyes and fixed them on him. He doesn't need to know, a voice told her and she forced a smile. "Yes... just... fell asleep for a bit..."

"Nightmares...?" He asked, crossing the room to her and flipping around his mask once again.

"Yes," she admitted, but vowed not to speak on them any further if he asked.

He nodded, surveying her and, apparently, deciding she was alright. He turned and began sauntering around the edge of the room, glancing up at the top shelf of the bookcases. After a while, he reached up and pulled one loose. "Here's a good book, Abby," he said, bringing it to her.

She took it, making a conscious effort not to let her hand shake upon doing so, and quickly shifted the chair a bit to hide the faint dampness of the bile she's spit up on the carpeting beneath it. The book was titled 'The Age of Ancients', and a print of a monstrous, black, dragon soared upon its cover. "We learned about the 'Age of Ancients' in school," Abby told him. "I'll read this one later."

Chester nodded, but did not take the book back when she attempted to hand it to him. "I think dragons are terrible things," he said instead. "In their time in the world, Lordran was nothing but darkness and fogs and crags and canyons... and those things were the cause of it all. I wonder, Abby, what do you think of dragons?"

Abby considered it a moment. "I... I'm not sure. I know there was a great emptiness in the world when they ruled."

"A great and terrible emptiness," Chester added, sitting beside her on the edge of the table. "They're horrible beasts, Abby, that book will tell you that much. Beasts that aren't to be trusted."

Abby narrowed her eyes on his, avoiding looking at his dimpled chin. "Why are you asking me this?" She asked, then after a moment's thought, added, "Is this because of the 'rats in the walls'?"

Chester grinned. "You're as clever as you are beautiful, my lady."

Abby frowned. "You don't have to use secret talk around me, Chester. What's happened in the castle?"

Chester folded his hands in his lap and stared at them, seeming to

consider his words carefully. When he spoke, he spoke slowly and deliberately. "Abby... there are those who don't believe in Logan. That don't believe in you. There are men and women in this very castle that are so desperate for some sense of... belonging and understanding that they would turn to any mad theory thrown at their feet and gnaw at it like a starving dog to a bone." He paused, his eyes squinting slightly. "Well, a bone has been thrown in the castle. And the starving are feasting." He stared at Abby, seemingly awaiting a response. When she didn't give him one, he went on. "A covenant that worships dragons is... running wild here in the castle."

"Worships dragons... the Path of the Dragon, you mean?" Abby asked; they'd studied all sorts of different covenants in Vinheim.

"Yes," he confirmed. He held her eyes for a long moment before taking a breath and saying, "Abby, I believe these lunatics wish to assassinate you."

Abby's mouth fell agape. Her hands reached for her chest. "Me? But why? I've done nothing to anyone! I only wanted to help! I-"

"Shhhh," Chester shushed her, rubbing his gloved fingers along her cheek. "I won't let anyone harm you, my princess. You have my word. But you must understand that a time may come when these... cultists approach you. You must not trust them, no matter how kind they may ostensibly appear."

Abby was rubbing her chest, staring into the candle flame anxiously. "Who... do you know who they are?"

"We are working on ascertaining that information at this very moment," Chester told her. "If we do happen to catch one of them... Abby, they'll have to be hurt in order to find out who the others are. You understand that, don't you? Logan and myself and you, you especially, we aren't bad people."

"No, of course not!" Abby agreed immediately.  
"We want whats best for Lordran."  
"Yes," Abby said, nodding.  
"And we will do what it takes to ensure Lordran is saved."

She hesitated. "Well..." She began, but Chester's fingers cupped her chin and pulled her head back, and he leaned forward. His lips pressed to hers and kissed. They were warm and moist and wonderful and Abby's heart pounded in her chest as they locked with her own. "Oh," she whispered when he'd pulled away, staring up into his dark eyes transfixed.

"We will do what it takes, won't we, Abby?"

"Yes," she answered immediately. "For Lordran," she added, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She rose from the chair and laid her hands upon his chest, her eyes flicking across the comely features of his face. He started to say something, but what it was she would never know.

She covered his mouth with her own and kissed him deeply.

Chapter 24

Laurentius' quarters in the castle were not entirely dissimilar from those that Quelana had briefly shared with Abby. The pyromancer's room was long and wide and unencumbered by walls; the front section housing tables and cabinets and the rear section containing the hearth and bed separated only by a short fall of stone steps. Within the hearth, a fire quietly cooked a smattering of logs, filling the room with the faint sent of wood and painting the walls in red light and flickering shadows. The furnishing was much like the man himself: sparse and tidy and awash in dark colors. Some artists rendition of Izalith hung at the back wall, an enormous painting looming over the hearth, but Quelana, having spent a great portion of her life there, didn't think the painter had done it justice. The rocks weren't jagged enough, the fires not nearly as tall as they should have been, and the lakes of lava were a flat and dull shade of orange when they should have been bright and vibrant. Still, the painting brought her some sense of comfort, and it at least spoke to Laurentius' passion for the flame, though in that, she needed no further convincing.

The two of them had escaped Logan's mad dungeon the day before, and as Quelana sat reflecting on it, she realized how lucky they had truly been. The dungeon wrapped around the inner walls of the prison tower in a semi-circle before spilling out to a large and barred tunnel, and if it hadn't been for their combined efforts of pyromancy to melt a few of the bars away, they would have been captured there on the spot. And Mother Izalith only knows what would have become of us then, Quelana reflected, pulling her robes closer to her body as a chill took her spine. The tunnel had led them to an enclosed garden within the castle walls, and from there, Laurentius has snuck them back inside, through a maze of hallways (of which they had to hide several times in shadowed nooks and emptied rooms), and finally here, to his quarters. Quelana had been dreadfully tired, and-trusting the man the most she could having used her Undead Rapport to loosen his tongue-allowed herself a brief rest, of which Laurentius assured her heartily would go undisturbed.

It had, but now she was awake and alone in a castle that had, after witnessing the madness housed within Logan's dungeon, grown ominous and foreboding and heavy around her, like the cumbersome human clothing they'd bundled her up in at Domhnall's so long ago. Quelana dared not step outside the barred, wooden, door, and so she sat, judging the poor painting of her faraway home above the man's hearth and wondering what would become of both Abby and herself if they remained in the castle much longer.

Eventually, a rapping of knuckles rolled the outside of the door, the sound breaking such a long, deep, silence within that Quelana gasped and felt heat emanating from her fingertips as her inner flame instinctively came alive to protect her. "Chaos," the muffled voice of Laurentius spoke

from the other side: the code word he'd told her he'd use upon returning to ensure her it was him and acting of his own accord. Quelana rose and, after an anxious moment's hesitation, pulled the barring loose from the door. It swung back on its hinges, and Laurentius-alone, thankfully- stepped inside, quickly sealing the thing shut behind him.

"Mother of Pyromancy," he greeted, bowing reverently, "I hope you rested well."

"I rested," she answered, omitting the fact the sleep had been brief and poor. "What's happening out there? Is anyone aware it was us who were in that insane dungeon? What of Abby? Is she safe?"

Laurentius lifted a hand to slow her questioned. "Mother of-"

"Don't call me that anymore," Quelana interrupted. "I shared my flame with humans, that much is true, but the crafting of it has been so refined and iterated upon over the years since, it is hardly my 'child'. Just answer my questions."

Laurentius swallowed, clearly perturbed he'd upset her, and motioned to the grouping of soft-backed chairs gathered around the hearth. She sighed, quickly crossed to them, and sat, awaiting impatiently for him to join beside her. "Something to drink, Moth- er, Quelana?" He asked before seating.

"No," she answered. "Sit down and answer me."

Laurentius bowed, apologized, and seated himself across from her, pulling a fresh log from a pile beside the hearth and depositing it within. "No one is aware you nor I were inside Logan's dungeon," he said, unsheathing a fire iron from a rack and poking the log deeper into the flames. "For that much, we can be grateful."

"What do we have to be ungrateful for?"

"They're hunting us," Laurentius said, turning to face her, his mouth set in a hard line above his bearded chin. "Logan has been suspicious of the Path of the Dragon living within the walls of his castle for some time now. He caught two of our brothers and our sister in prayer a few days before you and I arrived and banished them to die out in the cold. No supplies were afforded them when they left, well, no official supplies. Some brothers and myself snuck them what we could."

"What do you mean they're hunting us?" Quelana questioned.

"It is at is sounds. Logan's issued a reward to his entire guard, Petrus, and even the knight Solaire, to bring him the heads of anyone suspected of worshiping dragons."

Quelana sat quietly for a moment, mulling the man's words over. "Yet you

claim he doesn't know who any of the members are?"

"No. Not that I know of, at least."

"How do you slip something like that by a man like him?" Quelana asked. "His power seems... unnatural. And the sorcerer in that dungeon, Griggs, claimed Logan could sense a person's mere presence."

"You avoid him," Laurentius said, nodding his head and staring into the hearth; the flames casting flickering twin reflections upon his eyes. "As I have. I won't go near the man. Chasing you into his dungeon was the closest I've come since meeting him. I've remained on his council from afar, and the only reason so is because of my knowledge of pyromancy. I've, regrettably, had to befriend Chester and the Knight of Thorns to remain informed of Logan's... more secretive actions."

"Is Abby in danger?" Quelana asked. Laurentius sighed, and Quelana felt her skin crawl. "She is, isn't she? What are they going to do to her!? Tell me!"

"The girl is, in a way, safe," the pyromancer quickly said, trying to lay a reassuring hand upon her own, but Quelana pulled it away and stared intently at him til he continued. "But Logan is... securing her loyalty to his cause, whatever mad cause it may be."

"How?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Laurentius admitted. "But I know he's ordered Chester to spend an abnormal amount of time with the girl. If I had to guess... he's set the man's charms upon her. Chester is, unfortunately, very talented in that skill. He's likely working to make the girl fall in love with him."

"Fall in love?" Quelana snapped. "That's ridiculous. Abby isn't so foolish to be manipulated that easily. She is-"

"-she is alone, my lady," Laurentius interjected. "And she is afraid. And young. And, most importantly, she is vulnerable. Logan's no fool either. He knows these things, and he is acting accordingly to win her loyalty to his side."

"But what does he want with her!?" Quelana demanded. "If he has no intentions of lighting the Kiln of the First Flame..."

"My lady, Abby has already done more for Logan in the brief time she's been here than any of us have. She has turned the men and women inside these walls back to his side. He was losing his grip on them, despite all of his mad spells and clever tricks, he was losing them. And now he's shown them hope in the form of the girl, and the closer he is associated with that hope, the more loyal they will remain to him."

"I won't allow her to be used like some... slave!" Quelana shouted.

"Please keep your voice down, my lady," Laurentius pleaded. "And I agree with you! The Order agrees with you. We want to see the girl away from Logan as much as you, but our moves in this little game Logan plays must be calculated, not rash. And now... now we must remain more careful than ever with this hunt of his active."

The higher the odds stack against you, the more easily it becomes to fool your opponent, Quelana heard Lautrec's voice speak in her head. He'd said that somewhere along their travels in their brief time together, and upon remembering it, she found herself wishing he was there beside her. He was a stubborn and cold-hearted man, but he was a leader, that she could not deny. Whatever quality he possessed, whatever flame burned in his eyes that could command men to his will, the pyromancer before her lacked. Laurentius was a descent man, now that she'd gotten to the truth of his intentions, but he was plain of both face and voice, and seemed far too cautious to take the bold sort of actions Lautrec would have to secure Abby's saftey.

"My lady...?" Laurentius questioned.

Quelana realized she'd been staring at him without speaking for quite some time. "It's nothing," she answered quickly. "So... what is our next move?"

"I've called a meeting of our brethren," he explained. "They'll be here shortly. We will discuss that very question."

"Your brethren," Quelana corrected. "I certainly stand at your side in this mad conflict, but I do not share your devotion to... whatever dragon God you worship."

Laurentius stared at her, the hearth fire casting dancing shadows upon his face. "My lady... it is the Eternal Dragon in the Great Hollow we worship. When we leave this cursed castle and escape the clutches of Logan's wicked hands, we will begin our pilgrimage there. A pilgrimage that will lead us right through Blighttown. I know you wish to return there. You spoke of it several times on our travel here from the Burg."

"This is... true," she admitted, careful to guard any sense of longing. She'd learned a long time ago that when humans discovered your desires, they wielded them against you to bend you to their will.

"You willreturn home," Laurentius told her, smiling. "But by the time we make it there, you will see that salvation lies only upon the Path, and I promise you, you will walk it with us."

"And if I don't?" She questioned, thinking of how Lautrec and Patches had taken her in ropes from the swamps the last time she refused to leave them. The memory felt like a lifetime ago.

Laurentius shrugged. "We don't pass judgement on those who don't share our faith. Every man and woman must walk their own Path. All we can hope for is to show them ours is the truest."

"And what comes at the end of this path of yours?"

"Transcendence, my lady," Laurentius said, his smile broadening. "Those who walk the Path of the Dragon to its end will shed their human form and become a dragon themselves, and then we will fly and soar and it will be us who gives birth to the new age of Lordran."

They're mad, Quelana realized. A different, perhaps more gentle, form of madness than Logan's, but mad all the same. She forced an uneasy smile at Laurentius, matching his own. I will aid them in freeing Abby, and then the two of us will flee them as well.

A gentle knock, as the pyromancer's was before, came rapping upon the door. Laurentius stood, gesturing for Quelana to remain seated, and crossed the room to meet it. He asked who it was, and a muffled voice answered, "Chaos.". The door came unbarred and the largest man Quelana had ever seen came lumbering in, ducking his head beneath the doorway so as not to clip it. He was burly, a suit of black iron encasing his enormous body, and yet his unhelmed face looked soft and kind as he smiled upon Laurentius and the two shook hands. The man's bushy eyebrows raised as he spotted Quelana beside the hearth, and Laurentius was quick to lead him over.

"My lady, this is my brother, Tarkus; or as they call him 'Black Iron Tarkus'," Laurentius explained, presenting the massive man beside him.

Tarkus stepped forth as Quelana rose, his shoulders standing higher than the top of her head, and took her hand in his own. She felt as if he could crush her bones with a squeeze, but he was gentle, rubbing his thumb along her knuckles with a surprising tenderness, and when she looked to his face, a big, toothy, grin awaited her in greeting beneath those bushy eyebrows. "Hello," he bellowed, a voice as deep and rumbling as she'd expected. "I've heard about you, my lady. You are as beautiful as they say."

"Th-thank you," Quelana stammered, still worried he'd accidentally break her hand.

He didn't. Instead, he released it and lowered his big frame into a chair near the hearth; his legs so long, his knees were up to his chest once he was fully seated. He laid an enormous greatsword beside the chair, the hilt of which looked custom built for his big hands. The blade was chipped in some places, stained with the blood of those foolish enough to face the man in others.

"You are... very large," Quelana said, taking a seat across from him.  
Tarkus frowned, as if confused, and looked down at his own body. When

his eyes landed there, he gasped and his bushy brows rose in surprise. "I am very large! Why, I'm the biggest man I've ever seen!"

Quelana narrowed her eyes, unsure if he was being cruel with her or not.

A rumble of hearty laughter escaped his lips and informed her he was not. "I jest, my lady. Yes, I am big. I promise you, though, I am as gentle a man as any you've met and likely even more so. As long as your on my side that is," he added, pointing a thick finger in her direction. When she eyed it warily, his face broke to laughter again, the sound rumbling through the room. "She's a serious one, isn't she?"

"Aye," Laurentius confirmed, holding his eyes upon Quelana. She spotted that longing in his face again, that desire for her that he'd confessed when under her spell, and quickly turned from him, growing uncomfortable.

Another knock came at the door, and this time when Laurentius went and received his code word and removed the heavy barring blocking the entrance, a woman much smaller than Tarkus exchanged a friendly nod of her head with the pyromancer and walked inside. As she neared the fire, Quelana examined her. The woman wore white robes and a white hood, white boots and white gloves, and Quelana knew then she must have been Rhea of Thorolund. Her pupils-in some other life, she supposed-had spoken of the woman on occasion and her maiden outfit. She was a priestess who, Quelana thought, belonged to the Way of White covenant; a group of clerics and knights joined by the art of miracle-casting.

Tarkus rose upon her entrance to the grouping of chairs around the hearth, and the giant man greeted her with a smile and a bow. "Rhea," he greeted.

"Hello Tarkus," she returned. Her eyes fell to Quelana. "And you're the witch. Oh, I apologize. That was rude of me. You're not a witch, well, I mean you are, but... it isn't proper to greet someone in such a manner. Perhaps, well, let me try again. I am Rhea, of Thorolund, and I've heard... quite a bit about you, Quelana."

Quelana nodded, watching the woman's eyes peering out from beneath her maiden's hood, wondering what the priestess expected her to say.

"Well, I welcome you to our little group here," Rhea went on when it was clear Quelana wasn't going to talk. "We are some of the few people left willing to hold a beacon of light in a world shrouded in darkness. If you have need of healing or, perhaps, some other miracle, you need only let me know and my talisman will sing for you as it has for many others. Not that I'm insinuating you are weak or anything. I only wish, well, to make you feel... welcome among us. Perhaps-"

"Rhea," Tarkus said, and when the woman looked to him, he smirked.  
"Oh, yes, I suppose, well, I ramble at times," she said, some color flushing

in her cheeks. "I welcome you to our group. May your feet find the Path as ours have and walk it true."

"Aye," Tarkus agreed.

"Aye," Laurentius added.

The sound of knocking filled the room once again. This time, two figures stood in the doorway once Laurentius had unbarred it, and Quelana remembered him saying their numbers only counted five inside the castle walls, and so, she presumed, this was the last of them. The first one through was a young man in dark woolen clothing, black gloves and boots, and a small round cap atop his short and uncombed hair. "Bloody hell, pyro," he complained, stepping into the room. "Could you have picked a more dreadful time to call this meeting? You know, some of us still like to do that thing where you close your eyes for a bunch of hours and then you feel a whole lot better? What's that called? Oh, right, sleeping." He marched across the room, sweeping a long nod to Tarkus and Rhea. When his eyes landed on Quelana, he frowned. "This is her, huh? You don't look like no fire witch to me. But then, I guess I never seen no fire witch. Just thought you'd be, well, sort of ugly or maybe horns poking out of your head or something."

"This rude young man is Rickert of Vinheim," Rhea said, fixing him with a look of admonishment.

"Aye," he said, sticking out his hand. Quelana slowly took it, and when she had, he lowered himself, squinting beneath her hood to get a better look at her. "Well, you ain't ugly at all, are ya? She's quite pretty, huh?" Then, over his shoulder, "Good find, pyro."

They're all in such good spirits, Quelana thought, pulling her hand free from the young man's grip and tightening the hood of her cloak to better conceal her face. Perhaps there is some validity to their mad worship of the dragons. She looked back to Laurentius, but what she saw instead caused her mouth to fall agape. The last member of their covenant to enter the room was a woman in dingy, tarnished, grey robes with a bun of strawberry-blonde hair atop her rather nervous-looking face. Quelana recognized her instantly as the firekeeper, Anastacia of Astora.

Rickert, who was still watching Quelana, turned from her reaction to Anastacia and back. "Don't bother trying to chat with that one. Woman's said less than ten words since joining up with us. Lot of good putting the tongue back in her mouth did, ey Tark?"

Quelana faced him, frowning. "You're saying she has a tongue?"

"Logan returned it to her," Rhea answered, seating herself next to Tarkus, looking comically small beside him. "No one knows how, but I imagine it was some terrible spell of his. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a catch to

it all. Maybe, well, maybe that's why she doesn't speak very much. Perhaps she can't? A terrible life to lead, I imagine. There was one time when-"

"If only you'd catch that spell, Rhea," Rickert teased the priestess and flopped down beside Quelana.

Rhea's face reddened, but she offered no retort.

Laurentius barred the door shut once more, took Anastacia's arm in his own, and crossed to the rest of them, walking her carefully, as if she would collapse without him. As the firekeeper drew near to the fire, Quelana saw the lines of her face were drawn wearily, and her eyes were locked on the flame within the hearth. What could drive a man to want to murder you? Quelana wondered as Laurentius sat the firekeeper down at a bench set slightly away from the group. She folded her hands in her lap and dropped her gaze to the floor.

Laurentius himself entered the group and sat in a big chair opposite the hearth itself. "Brothers, sisters," he began, "I'd like to introduce you, formally, to Quelana, Mother of-er, well, one of the creators of pyromancy, Daughter of Chaos, and Descendant of the Great Witch Izalith herself. I'd ask you to be as warm and kind to her as you've been to each other, for I have traveled with her and spoken with her at length and I judge her descent."

"Yeah, we've all been introduced, firefingers," Rickert said. "So let's get on with it then, hm? Calling a meeting like this isn't exactly the safest idea you've had. Have we all forgotten what happened last time a few of us got together?"

Rhea's face darkened. "Nico and Vince... may the Eternal Dragon watch over them... wherever they are. They were good men, just men! It wasn't right of Logan to cast them out as if they were common thieves or, or, murderers or something!" When the woman saw Quelana staring at her, her look softened and she went on, "They were my sworn protectors. We joined up with Laurentius at the same time. Logan's men caught them in prayer to the Eternal Dragon, and, well, tossed them out."

"Not just Logan's men, but Petrus," Tarkus said with a shake of his large head. "Betrayed by your own guardian... my heart goes out to you, Rhea."

"Thank you," she said, nodding demurely. "I know if they walk the Path true, though, they will be safe. Perhaps, well, perhaps they've made the pilgrimage to the Great Hollow already?" She turned back to Quelana. "You didn't see two men and a woman with red hair in your travels, did you? The men would've been, well, rather heavy-set. The woman, er, mouthy and a bit obnoxious if you want the truth of it."

"No," Quelana said.

The four of them were staring at her as if she should continue. When she didn't, Rickert snorted laughter and said, "Geeze, what's with you fire- women? First Anastacia, now you too? Don't you ever have anything to say? You have to say something or Rhea will do enough talking for the both of you."

"Leave her be," Laurentius told him. "She's upset about the girl. As we all should be."

"Aye," Tarkus agreed. "That poor little thing with her hair all shaved off... Unfortunate that Logan set his mad sights on her."

"Maybe, maybe not," Rickert said, licking his lips and casting a sly grin on the group.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Rhea questioned.

"Means that if the girl can be turned to our side, we can use her against him," Rickert explained. "Hell, she might even be able to get close enough to assassinate the monster."

"She won't take a life," Quelana said, and again the whole group looked to her as if she were some exotic creature sitting amongst them. She felt pressured to continue, so she gathered herself and did. "I traveled with Abby for quite a few days and nights. The girl doesn't have a wicked bone in her body. She is sweet and kind and wants only to see Lordran saved."

"Oh, that's wonderful," Rhea cooed, holding her hands to her chest and smiling.

"Won't be wonderful if Logan poisons the girl's mind like he did Havel's," Rickert said.

"Havel..." Tarkus said quietly, glancing into the hearth fire with a wistful look. "I never seen a man as insane as he was after his and Logan's duel."

"That's why rescuing and protecting Abby should be our top priority," Laurentius said. "She is Chosen, and though we may not share the same views for Lordran's future, her heart is pure and should remain so."

"I agree," Rhea said. "But, Laurentius, if this hunt you've told us about is true... we are all at risk now."

"I hear that detestable Knight of Thorns, Kirk, is vying for captain of the guard," Tarkus said. "He wants to take the title from Solaire. I'd hate to imagine this place being trained and run by him."

"Where is Solaire?" Quelana asked, looking around the group. "I traveled with him as well. He seemed a good and noble knight."

"Solaire is good and noble," Tarkus agreed with a hearty nod of his head.

"Yes and about as sharp as a dull blade," Rickert added. "The knight is blinded by his own chivalrous loyalty. He will never turn from Logan."

"Logan saved his life," Rhea said. "You can't blame him for remaining loyal to the man after that. If he is made aware of what a monster the man truly is, I'm sure he will not continue to support his cause."

"That's just it," Rickert went on. "He'll never see what a monster Logan is because to him, Logan is the 'savior of Lordran'. The knight is lost. Forget about him and let us move to a topic actually worth discussing."

"Such as?" Tarkus asked.

"Such as killing Logan," Rickert answered. "If this girl, Abby, won't do it, one of us will have to."

"You're mad," Tarkus said with a chuckle. "The man is never ten steps from his golem army."

"Then we kill his damned golems too."

"I've fought with golems, young man," Tarkus said, thumping his greatsword off the carpeted floor. "Have you? They don't exactly just lay down and die when you tell them to."

"Logan has things worse than golems," Quelana interjected, turning the two arguing men's faces to her own. "When I was in his dungeon-"

"You were down there!?" Rhea cried out. "Oh, my, Laurentius you didn't tell us that!"

"I wanted us to gather so I didn't have to retell the tale four times," the pyromancer explained.

"We were down there," Quelana went on. "He has a half-woman, half- dragon hybrid locked up in a hole! He has a wolf that came upon us in the Darkroot Garden that had doubled in size since arriving here. And he has..." Quelana took a breath to steady her anger. "He has children locked up down there."

"You saw the children?" Tarkus asked, his bushy brow rising hopefully. "They live then?"

She nodded.

"Oh, thank Father Eternal," Rhea said, slumping in her chair as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. "We worried so dearly about those little ones. Andre and Sieglinde took a group of children with them when they left for the Burg. Oh, I do hope they are alright too, even if they didn't share our devotion to the Path."

"They were heading after Domhnall," Laurentius said. "Quelana said she

spent two nights with the merchant in a home he'd made in the Burg."

"More good news," Rhea said cheerfully. "I miss Domhnall as dearly as a lost brother. The castle grew a bit darker the day he departed. ...if only we'd known how right he was about Logan then."

"Domhnall is a survivor," Tarkus said. "I knew he'd be alright. Andre and Sieglinde, too. Although... poor Sieglinde. She'll be devastated to hear about her father."

Laurentius' face darkened. "Yes... I only wish I hadn't bore witness to such a disgusting display of cruelty, and then having to go along with the rest of them as if I enjoyed it." He lifted his head to the group and fixed them each with a confident look in turn. "Can we agree that the knight Kirk must die before we depart this castle."

"Aye, you can be sure of it," Tarkus said with a nod.

"His judgement should remain in the hands of the Eternal Dragon," Rhea said. "But... I certainly won't stop any of you from hurting the vile man."

"Should stick his own bloody barbed sword up his arse," Rickert said with a laugh. "See if he spits the barbs out after. Heh."

"How crude," Rhea said, fixing him with a reproachful look.

"What about this girl, Abby?" Tarkus said. "Do any of you have any ideas how to get her away from that damnable Chester? The man seems to be with her day and night."

"I could provide distraction," Laurentius said. "He and Kirk both still trust me. I could gather a meeting at a fixed time and place, away from the girl."

"Let me go to her," Quelana said quickly before the others could offer. "Please. I know her. She will listen to me."

"Her mind may be already starting to go, Quelana," Laurentius explained. "The girl you come across might not be the same as the one you remember..."

"The witch has the right of it, though," Rickert pointed out. "Better her than any of us. The girl doesn't even know the rest of us. What would she think if we came running up spewing some tale of Logan's madness?"

"She's think we're the mad ones," Rhea agreed with a nod of her head. "Yes. Send Quelana."

Laurentius nodded, stroking at his beard and staring into the hearth. "That settles that matter then. I will provide you the opening. It will be up to you to convince the girl from there. But, Quelana, if you feel the girl is...

being dishonest with you, or perhaps trying to lead you into a trap of some sort-"

"That's ridiculous," Quelana cut him off.

"I just want you to be prepared to flee," Laurentius pressed on. "If Logan gets his hands on you..." He grimaced. "I don't want to even imagine what he'd do."

"It won't come to that," Quelana assured him. "Even if Abby refused to come with me, she wouldn't betray me to Logan."

Laurentius stared at her. "On that... I hope you are right."

Rhea twiddled her gloved thumbs in her lap. "If you do save the girl... then all we have to do is retrieve those missing children, save them, and then get as far away from this cursed castle as we can before Logan realizes it."

"The children were alive," Quelana said. "But... not conscious. They looked to be either sedated with some potion or under some spell. Their eyes were rolled back into their heads. They looked like they had a blue tint to them as well."

Shrewd looks were exchanged all around the group, but no one offered any theories. Quelana glanced over her shoulder at Anastacia sitting quietly by herself. Tell Anastacia I tried, Lautrec's words rung in her ear; the departing message he'd given her the day Patches murdered him on the bridge.

"If Andre hadn't left," Tarkus broke the silence, "we'd be in better shape. That man knew every shortcut in this bloody castle. Blacksmiths... all they seem to want is to know how every damned thing is put together."

"Well Andre is gone, so a lot of bloody good that does us," Rickert said. "When we're ready to leave, I say we stroll right out the front gate. Who's going to stop us?"

"Perhaps the archers and crossbowmen Petrus had stationed atop the wall when Solaire left," Rhea said, frowning. "Don't be foolish. The front gate is too risky."

"Every path is going to be risky, priestess," Rickert retorted.

"Then we find the least risky one," Rhea snapped back. "Remember, we'll have children with us!"

"Perhaps a second meeting is in order," Laurentius said, putting an end to their bickering. "For now, Quelana and myself will focus on removing Abby from Logan's hold. We'll meet again when the task is done. Sound good?"

A smattering of muttered agreement went around the group, and when Laurentius clasped his hands together and stood, the rest stood with him. "Short meeting," Rickert said. He was the first to step to the door. "But interesting nonetheless." He bowed his head, cracked the door to steal a glance outside, and exited. A moment later, his knuckles rapped the outside.

When Quelana frowned curiously, Rhea explained, "That means its clear for the next to leave. It was nice meeting you, Quelana. I look forward to our next encounter. May Father Eternal watch over you," she said, smiling and departing herself. Like Rickert before her, she rapped at the door.

"Stay safe, the lot of you," Tarkus said, the big man ducking outside and signaling it was clear with a knock.

Anastacia moved to cross the room, but Quelana took hold of her arm. "Lady Anastacia, I'd like you to hang back. I wish to speak with you alone."

Anastacia's looked at her as if she were speaking a different language. Her brow creased nervously and she looked, desperate for help, to Laurentius.

"She is a friend of mine, Ana. You can trust her," he said. "I will return in half an hours time." He nodded to Quelana, bowed to Anastacia, and left.

Alone, Quelana kept her grip on the firekeeper's arm, not tight enough to harm her, certainly, but tight enough to let her know she wasn't making a run for it. "Will you sit with me a moment?" Quelana asked, softening her words the most she could so as not to frighten the woman.

Anastacia looked fearfully from Quelana to the door to the chair. She swallowed, took a breath, and sat. Quelana released her arm and sat across from her. The firekeeper lowered her head timidly and tugged at the hem of her dingy robe. Quelana watched her for a moment before saying, "I have a message for you."

Ana's head lifted, her dark blue eyes filled with a terrible dread.

"But I'd like to know a bit about you first," Quelana went on. "Is it true you have a tongue?"

The firekeeper bit her lip, stole a nervous glance to the door over Quelana's shoulder once again, and swallowed. "Yes," her voice came so quietly, Quelana barely heard her. "Please... don't make me use it. It is a wicked thing and I don't wish to use it."

She sounds on the verge of tears, Quelana thought, eyeing the woman up curiously. "I mean you no harm. You have nothing to fear." She considered her next words carefully. "Why do you say your tongue is a wicked thing?"

Anastacia shook her head, but offered no reply.

"Please..." Quelana pressed her.

Ana was quiet for a long moment then, and just when Quelana had assumed she wasn't going to answer, she said, "It is murderous. It is responsible for the loss of many innocent lives. I'm sorry. Please, I don't... I can't..." Her voiced shook and her hands trembled.

Quelana reached across the short gap between them and took the woman's hand in her own. "It's alright," she assured her. "Do you want to know something about me?" She took a deep breath, readying herself to relive the terrible tale of Izalith. "When I was younger, my home was engulfed in chaos. My mother was deformed into some demonic monstrosity, and the plague began spreading through my lands and devouring my sisters as well. My older sister, Quelaag, took up arms and made to fight the chaos. My other sister, Quelaan, stood beside her. One of my sisters actually ventured into the madness to try and save our mother. Our sweet brother... he was taken by the chaos and twisted into a ceaseless pit of anguish and despair. And do you know what I did? I ran. I fled from my home, my mother, my sisters, my brother, and I never looked back. They died or suffered a fate worse than death, and I live on. There is a pain in you, human. I see it in your eyes. You think you're alone in understanding whatever suffering you're experiencing, but you're not. I live with a torment of my very soul. And I live with it every day."

Anastacia was quietly staring at her, her mouth slightly agape, tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. She sat that way for a long time before, finally, she replied, "Then... you and I are not so different... I suppose."

"No," Quelana said quietly, amazed at how much pain speaking of her family could cause her still to this day.

"My family was taken, too," Anastacia said. "But in my story... it was my fault." She sniffled and wiped the corners of her eyes. "I was born into a wealthy family. We... were happy. But we had enemies. Enemies that... wanted my father dead. My father was a knight, and poised to become the next great general of Carim's army."

"Carim?" Quelana questioned. "I thought you hailed from Astora?"

Ana managed the weakest of smiles. "I lie. It's... a very old lie and I tell it well but it is a lie nonetheless. I wanted to distance myself from Carim after... what I did." She swiped at a fresh trail of tears that had began racing down her cheeks. "They captured me. My father's enemies, I mean. They caught me walking home from school. They... hurt me very badly." She whimpered, swallowed, forced herself to go on. "And in the end, I told them how to get into the castle where my family lived. There was a secret passage... and I... I told them..."

She lowered her face into her hands and sobbed and Quelana stood,

crossed the gap, and sat beside her, draping the woman's shoulder in her arm. "Shhh," she hushed, rocking the woman gently. "It's alright. You don't have to tell me anymore. If I'd known how painful this would be..."

"They burned them," Anastacia went on anyway. "They burned my mother and my father alive in their bed. Then, while my parent's screams still filled the castle walls, they slaughtered my older brother and sister in their bedrooms."

"I'm... so sorry," Quelana said, wishing she could offer the woman more than just words.

"The only ones left in my entire family after the slaughter were myself... and my younger brother."

Quelana had asked the knight of Carim once what he killed Anastacia over, love or hatred. Both, had been his answer after a long silence. Both. She understood now, all at once, she understood. They look so alike, Quelana thought. How hadn't I seen it before?

"The assassins fled," Anastacia went on. "And I was left to my father's guard. I confessed immediately. I... I could barely see the tears in my eyes were so thick. It was my fault... I was looking at the charred corpses of my parents and it was my fault. Then they brought my brother in..." She clasped her trembling hands together and breathed as if she were running out of air. "He was all I had. Everything gone in an instant because of my one, foolish, mistake, and the only thing left to me was my brother. I asked him as my father's guard held me on my knees before him if he could ever forgive me. He told me... he told me he couldn't." She took a moment to clear her throat. "And I told him to kill me... what point was there in living when there nothing left to me worth living for. I begged him to end my life right there in the room, and perhaps he would've, but my father's guard had other plans for me. They told me death was too kind a fate for what I'd done. They took my tongue so I could never use it to cause pain again and sent me off to the witches and sorcerers at Vinheim to bind me to the flame, to turn me into a firekeeper, so that I would live with my regret, my mistake, my suffering... forever."

The tears had stopped coming from the woman, and only a hollow, empty, look remained on her face as she stared into the hearth. Quelana's throat had run dry. The story had been so horrifying, she could barely muster words herself. "I... I am so sorry."

Anastacia nodded, but did not speak.

I must tell her, Quelana thought. "Anastacia... I met and traveled with your brother."

The woman turned to her, a strange mix of emotion suddenly springing

life into her face. "Is he... alive?"  
Quelana shook her head. "No... I don't think so. He was-"

Anastacia buried her face in her hands again and a fresh wave of sobs came muffled from within.

Quelana frowned. "Are you... saddened by this?"

Ana pulled her face from her hands and looked at Quelana as if she were mad. "Of course I'm sad! Lautrec... he was my baby brother!"

And all she had left, Quelana realized, feeling foolish for even questioning the woman. "As I said, he left me with a message. What were the last words you spoke to him?"

She sniffled. "I asked for... for his forgiveness."

Quelana nodded. "He told me to tell you: he tried."

Those two simple words, more than anything the woman had said previously, more than any repressed memory she'd lived through, or pain she'd brought back to the surface, those words brought a look of such sorrow to her face, Quelana thought she was going to collapse. She nearly did, but Quelana took hold of her, and Anastacia fell to her shoulder, crying and clutching desperately to her robes. Quelana tightened her hold on the woman and held her like that.

Neither of them spoke for a long, long, time.

Chapter 25

The sight of Logan's 'soldiers' lined before him was not a reassuring one, standing there atop the Archive's upper wall in their mismatches scraps of armors; iron for those who had the strength to bear it, leather for those who did not, and neither for the unlucky few that came after the supplies had run short. The swords of those who wielded them were so dull they might as well have been pointed clubs, and the shields Solaire had handed out were weak, wooden, things that would stop an arrow well enough, but if anything heavier fell atop their cracked surface, they looked ready to burst and splinter. The men with the skill to wield a bow seemed the lucky ones, but even they were facing a rather limited supply of arrows, and when those ran out, they'd be left only with their pitiful daggers to defend themselves.

These are not warriors, Solaire thought, forcing a smile to his face so his thoughts would not show. These are men too old to fight proper, and boys too young to know any better. And women... He turned on the left flank, where a group of four women stood in attention. They looked small, practically drowning in the big coats of leather armors around them, but their was at least an intensity in their eyes, a burning, and that was more than Solaire could say for some of the men. The knights and soldiers of the world had all vanished over the years, either gone hollow and joined up in Anor Londo, or killed in action, and this was what remained to defend the last people of Lordran; a smattering of elderly and teenagers and women, of whom Solaire was expected to train. Sun protect us in the coming days, he thought, stepping forth to address them. Or perhaps speed Logan's work so none need die at least.

Solaire cleared his throat. "Hello," he said, but the word sounded awkward, and not one of the four dozen gathered before him returned the greeting. He swallowed, collected himself, and went on anyway. "Many of you know me, some of you don't. I am Knight Solaire, Warrior of the Sun, captain of Logan's guard, and your instructor today."

A brief, unenthusiastic, clap came from the very back of the crowd. Solaire raised his head to peer over the heads of his trainees and found the Knight of Thorns, Kirk, leaning against the parapets there; his helmet removed and clutched at his side, a sardonic smirk on his face.

Solaire's face reddened, but he ignored the man and went on with his speech. "As you all know, the Duke's Archives are the last hold of humanity in Lordran, and as such it must be protected dearly should any harm wish to befall it. Our foes gather in the city of Anor Londo to the East. They are numerous and they are ferocious, but they lack what we have, and that is the guidance of Logan's brilliant mind, the castle walls themselves, and, of course, the sun watching over us. Praise it, my friends. Praise the Sun." He awaited for them to return to words, and

when they did not, Kirk's taunting laughter filled the silence instead.

"It's bloody freezing up here," a voice complained, and when Solaire looked to its owner, he spotted Rickert of Vinheim, one of the few sorcerers that remained to the castle (most of them had gone mad either before or during the Great Cold). Rickert wrapped his arms to his body and frowned. "Can't we do this inside?"

Solaire gestured to the sun at his back, and though, admittedly, the chunk of pale, white, light behind the swirling twists of snow that ever-plagued the sky these days was not the bolstering presence it had once been, it was a presence nonetheless. "We stand beneath the mighty Sun, Rickert. Let its light be your blanket."

Rickert's youthful face did not look placated. He mimed draping an invisible blanket over his shoulders. "Oh, that's much better," he said dryly.

Solaire ignored the young man and turned to the wall behind him. He approached the parapets there, leaning out over them and pointing the way east. "Look here, my friends. I also wanted you all gathered here so that you could see the very real threat awaiting us, should we be unprepared to face it. Come. Join me." Slowly, they did. Solaire offered nods of gratitude as the crowd filled in around him, leaning out to peer down the maddening fall of the Archive's eastern wall. There, somewhat obscured by the heavy snowfall, the city of Anor Londo in all its glorious display of architecture awaited.

"I don't see anything," an old man with a few strands of grey hair left to his liver-spotted head muttered.

"To be fair, you don't see much of anything these days, Norm," Rickert said, grinning. "Hey - how many fingers am I holding up?"

"Piss off, boy."

Solaire cleared a dusting of snow free from the parapet beside him and narrowed his eyes onto the distant shapes of the city. It was true: the hollows could not be seen, but they were there. They could be spotted on occasion, moving in groups of half a dozen from building to building. Logan believed they were holed up in the Great Cathedral, but if they were, they had left the entrance clear. "There!" Solaire shouted, spotting movement. "Look, by the bridge leading to the cathedral!" The curious faces of the 'soldiers' followed his outstretched finger. The vague outline of two torch-bearing hollows could be made out amidst the snows, crossing the bridge in a rush.

"You sure we need an army for them two?" Rickert asked.

"Oh, stop it already," a woman scolded him, and Solaire craned his neck to see the priestess, Rhea, fixing the sorcerer with a dark look.

"Lady Rhea," Solaire greeted, smiling. "I didn't see you before." In truth, Solaire found it quite strange that both Rhea and Rickert were here at all. Rhea was a cleric, after all, and if war should come to the castle, she'd be well guarded, healing the wounded that fell back in retreat. Perhaps she seeks the peace of mind that she could defend herself, should it come to that, Solaire thought.

"Hello, Solaire," Rhea said, returning the smile.

"You know," Kirk's voice came from behind the crowd. "If you lot grouped up and tossed the old knight there over the side of the wall, you could all go back inside where its warm." He laughed.

"I'd sooner see you thrown over," Rhea muttered, and Rickert chortled beside her.

Solaire saw Kirk's look darken immediately. He pushed off the rear parapet and growled balefully, "What did you say to me?"

"Look! There's more!" A short man at the far end of the crowd with curly, blond, hair shouted. The crowd turned to follow his pointed finger, but Solaire held his gaze on Kirk. The big man in his dark armor squinted first at Rhea, then at Solaire himself before finally spitting to the snow-caked floor of the wall and disappearing back inside the guard tower.

"Where?" A rather stout woman at the knight's side questioned.

"There!" The blond man insisted, shaking his finger.

Solaire traced it down to the city, where the two torch-bearers from before had made their way down a narrow ledge that wrapped around the side of the Great Cathedral and were standing in wait for a second group of hollows to come and remove the barring from a gate blocking their path, increasing their numbers to seven. They were as small as insects from that far away and still foggy behind the wall of snowfall, but they were there. That much could not be denied. "You see?" Solaire said. "Our enemies hide in the buildings of the city, but they will not hide forever."

"How many are there, Solaire?" Henrik, who'd previously been his squire and now belonged to Petrus, asked.

"Many," Solaire answered.

"As in, he don't know," Rickert added.

"How could anyone know, Rickert," said Rhea. "We know there are a lot of them. Many of us here had seen them flocking to the city on our travels here to the Archives. Many more have lost dear friends or family in the vile creatures' warpath.

"Aye," a man said with a wistful nod of his head, and a muttering of

somber agreement from the crowd followed.

"See," Rhea said. "We know how dangerous the things are. The Knight Solaire is a good man for taking his time to prepare us for such."

"Thank you, my lady," Solaire said a sincere bow of his head.

"But I also feel," Rhea went on, "that it is important to remember what it is we defend. We defend those we lost and those we may yet lose, not Logan."

Solaire frowned. "Well, certainly no one thinks that, my lady, but we must not forget it is Logan whom provided us with this castle and these means to defend ourselves from the cold and from the hollows. We all owe him a great deal of gratitude."

Some of the crowd muttered their agreement, other did not. Rhea was biting at her lip, twiddling the thumbs of her gloves against one another. "Well... I suppose that is true. As long as our loyalties lie to one another and not-"

"-and to Logan," Solaire finished, fixing the priestess with a bemused look. Why is she so insistent on discrediting him? She opened her mouth in what Solaire assumed was to be further protest, but Rickert took hold of her arm. The two exchanged an unreadable look at the end of which, Rhea pressed her lips tightly together and cast a dissatisfied look Solaire's way. "Anyway," Solaire went on, "We must be prepared to defend ourselves from this threat in the East. So join me, my friends. I know many of you trained briefly with Petrus, but I intend to run things a different way, and I hope you will afford me an open mind as well as an open heart. Let us begin. Praise the Sun."

And so they trained. Solaire had some experience in the field, though he was by no means an expert. He knew swordplay, though, as well as anyone, and soon enough he had even the most feeble-armed men swinging with correct form, and certainly well enough to slice through the soft, decaying, flesh of a hollow soldier should they need to. The crowd segregated rather quickly into groups to spar on their own once they'd had the basics laid out before them. The four leather-clad women stuck together. The older men with their greying hair and crows-feet eyes bunched up, casting surly looks on the younger men who'd grouped together across from them. Rhea and Rickert stuck together, watching the rest of them curiously instead of sparring themselves. They didn't interfere, so Solaire did not protest.

He walked quietly amidst the sparring soldiers, his hands folded behind him, his eyes keeping vigilant for anything he might be able to correct. The old timers had a good grasp of striking and blocking and feigning attack when necessary, though must of them had been farmers in their younger days, and Solaire only had to point out their flaws once or twice.

The younger group of men needed the most aid. They were far too arrogant in their attacks on one another, and often times when one of them pursued a barrage of strikes, he wound up leaving himself open for an easy counter-jab to his unguarded stomach. Others struck too cautiously, too slowly, and any worthy fighter across from them would spot the attack coming, riposte and parry, and finish the fight before it had even began. Solaire told them as much, but with youth came hubris, and he'd spotted the men making the same mistakes not ten minutes after walking away from them. The women, to his surprise, were among the best fighters atop the wall. Many of them clearly carried a chip on their shoulder, perhaps because they'd received jeers from the men upon joining up, but they turned that anger to a ferocity, and when Solaire corrected them in their attack, they listened, fixed their problem, and adjusted.

A teenage boy with a fall of greasy brown hair that came to his elbows made the mistake of taunting one of the women. She was a short, stout, thing with a square jaw and a crop of black hair atop her wide brow. She crossed to the boy's group and challenged the taunter to a duel. The young man sneered, jested, laughed, and then was on the floor as quickly as Solaire had ever seen a man thrown down before. He had to cross to them and pull the woman free from her mounted position on the kid's waist, pummeling him with her bare hands. The other women cheered and applauded the woman as she returned to their group, and the boy clambered to his feet, his nose bloody and his left eye bruised, but his ego clearly housing the most severe injury.

"A good lesson," Solaire told him. "Never underestimate your opponent." He turned to the woman and bowed respectfully. "Well done, my lady."

"Ooo, the knight called you his lady, Winnie," one of her friends taunted, and the three of them laughed as the stout woman's face ran a deep red.

The sun moved from the low plains in the East to the jagged line of mountains in the far West, and by the time it started dipping beneath the horizon, casting its soft orange glow upon the wall and its combatants, Solaire was satisfied in his first day of training. The group huddled before him in the dying light didn't look nearly as crestfallen as they had in morning's light, and someday, the knight thought, they'd be a force worthy of fearing. Someday, he reminded himself, If the day should come when they need be a force. "Praise the Sun," he concluded the session with, bowing, and to his pleasant surprise, a few of them actually returned the words before shuffling into the guard tower to escape the cold winds that had come with nightfall.

He was among the last to depart, and upon entering the tower and facing the long climb of stairs to the Archive's lower levels, he spotted the lady Rhea staring intently at him within. Her face was lined with a stressful look, but when it seemed as if she were going to speak with the knight, Rickert was beside her, taking her waist in his arm and guiding her

hurriedly down the stairs. What queer behavior from those two, Solaire thought, but by the time he'd returned to his quarters in the barracks, he'd forgotten all about them and had the first good night's rest he'd had in a long time.

It was on the third day of training atop the roof when Kirk came to him. The day had been going well, Solaire impressed with how quickly some of the men and women were taking to their swordplay, and he was readying to teach them how to bash a foe with their shields to buy a moment's respite when he spotted the tall man crossing the roof with a satisfied little smirk upon his ugly face.

"If you're here to taunt me..." Solaire began angrily.

"Nope, not today," Kirk said. "Here to bring you downstairs."

"I'm busy."

"It can wait. This is important."

Solaire frowned. "More important than training our defenses?"

"Yes. The girl requires your presence. Follow me," he said, turned, and sauntered off.

Abby? Solaire wondered, glancing back at the soldiers-in-training. They were sparring, the click and clacks of dulled blades clashing against wooden shields ringing clear in the frosty, morning, air. "Henrik," he called to his former squire, who was in the midst of teaching one of the girl's how to riposte. The young man turned to him and raised his brow. "You have the command here. I will... return shortly."

He had to hurry down the guard tower stairs to catch up with Kirk, who hadn't bothered waiting for him. The dark knight whistled a cheerful tune as he strolled through the castle, taking the twists and turns of the halls with a lackadaisical pace. Solaire was thankful, at least, the man wasn't talking, he'd rather walk on in silence then have to deal with the knight's wretched tongue. They passed through a long hall, descended a flight of stairs, and wound up exiting into the great hall from some narrow side passage; Solaire never ceasing to be amazed at the many untrodden paths he'd yet to take in the castle.

A smattering of men and women, those were not still atop the Archive's walls at least, were gathered at the long tables eating and chattering quietly amongst each other. At the head of the room, gathered on the stone dais that overlooked the rest of the hall, were Chester and Abby; Chester masked in his longcoat and top hat, Abby garnished in a loose robe of cream-colored silk, silver slippers, and a jeweled crown around her brow. Solaire was a bit taken aback by the sight of the crown, not figuring Abby to be the sort to wear such an extravagant thing. When Kirk and himself approached the dais and set foot on its short fall of stairs to

join them, Abby turned to face their way and Solaire gasped. The girl's face had gone even more gaunt in the cheeks since the last time he'd seen her, and the darkness that had started ringing the bottoms of her pretty eyes was far more pronounced. She's aged ten years since coming here, Solaire thought with a sadness in his heart. That poor thing.

Kirk moved to the wooden chairs at the rear of the dais and exchanged nods with Chester. Solaire moved beside them and fixed his eyes on Abby, who was staring blankly at Kirk. "My lady," he greeted. Abby's head seemed to turn his way before her eyes did, and when she spotted him, a vague look of confusion came across her, as if she didn't know who he was. Then the faintest of smiles crept up her gaunt face and she planted her hands to the chair arms and rose; Solaire noting the way her arms shook with the effort of lifting herself.

"Solaire," she said, her smile widening, and fell forth into his arms to hug him.

She was so light in his hold, it was as if he were holding air. "My lady, are you alright? You don't look well, Abby. Is it... is it the nightmares still?"

"Yes," her voice came half-muffled against his chest. "Nightmares... terrible things." She pulled away, but kept hold of his arms. Her smile, at least, did not waver. "It's my burden to bear, though. Don't worry about me. How are you? How is the training?"

"It goes well my lady," Solaire answered, finding it difficult to look her in the eyes. "It... well, I was in the midst of a session when Kirk informed me you wish to speak with me?"

"Not exactly," Chester answered for her, rising beside the girl and wrapping her shoulder in his arm. He pulled her gently from Solaire and guided her back to the chair beside him. "There will be justice today, knight," the man said, his dark eyes peering out from beneath his mask. "And you will serve it."

"Justice?"

"Logan's justice," Chester confirmed. He turned to Kirk and nodded. "Go get him."

Kirk laughed and vanished behind the dais. Solaire turned his frown from the knight to Chester. "What is the meaning of this? What justice do you speak of? Where is Logan himself?"

"Logan is busy," Chester said. "My sweet Abby here has been granted the power to speak with his voice. Her word is as good as his now." And with that, he leaned across the chairs and kissed her on the cheek. Abby smiled at him, resting her hand on his own.

What a despicable man to lay his lips on as sweet a girl as her, Solaire

thought, grimacing.

"Ladies and gentleman, your attention," Chester said, cupping his hands around his mask to carry his voice across the hall. "Your attention. Here, you fools. Look here."

Slowly, the men and women feasting at the longtables set aside their meals and turned their bemused faces towards the dais, the chatter dying away and plunging the hall into a profound silence. Chester nodded. "Logan has a message to send today. It may appear cruel, but both he and I assure you it is necessary for the continued safety of all you fine folks within these walls. And your Chosen hero approves. Abby?"

Abby again clambered out of the chair with some effort, facing the crowd and setting her weak little smile upon them. "Yes. I approve."

"She speaks with Logan's voice now, so that's as good as his approval," Chester went on. "Kirk! Bring out the heretic."

Solaire turned with the rest of the crowd to face the rear entrance of the dais. Kirk and Petrus emerged, a man bound at the hands and blinded by a black bag over his head came struggling between them. Oh, may the Sun shine its mercy upon us, Solaire thought as he studied the prisoner. That man is too large to be anyone else...

Kirk and Petrus wrestled the captive to the head of the dais, where wooden stocks awaited. They shoved him to his knees with some effort and quickly worked his neck and wrists into the three grooves of the wood. Kirk slammed the stocks shut around the man, locking him in place, and Petrus ripped the hood free from his head. The large, shaggy- haired, head of 'Black Iron' Tarkus emerged.

"What is the meaning of this!?" Solaire snapped at once, stepping beside his friend. "Remove this man from the stocks now. I will vouch for his character. I assure you he's done nothing-"

"He is a traitor and a dragon-worshiper and if you touch those stocks, you'll find yourself in them soon enough," Chester said.

Tarkus turned his head the most it could muster locked between the wooden planks and offered Solaire a smile. "My friend," he called up to the knight. "Don't do anything rash. I do not fear these little men." Solaire saw one of the big man's eyes were swollen shut, and when he spoke, he could spot missing teeth in his mouth.

"He's been beaten," Solaire declared furiously. "You have no right to beat a man in captivity."

"We have the right to do what Logan tells us to," Kirk said, the ever- persistent smirk on his face raising higher as he spoke. "And Logan wants all the dragon-worshipers dealt with."

"If he would give up his friends," Petrus added. "His suffering would be over. But the man... the man only laughs when we hit him. He won't talk."

"You hit like women," Tarkus said and his hearty laughter filled the great hall.

Petrus' chubby face darkened. "You won't laugh after today."

"You're not going to kill this man," Solaire commanded, and suddenly wished he'd had his sword in its hilt.

"No, we're not," Chester confirmed. The slender man turned to the crowd, who'd been watching the drama unfold in a confused silence, and addressed them. "But we will," he bellowed. "Hear my words, people, a cult has sprung up amongst you! A cult that seeks to see the world to darkness - to dragons!"

Chatter immediately rumbled through the great hall as the men and women turned to one another and began whispering their trepidation.

Chester let them talk for a bit before continuing. "They are small and they are treacherous but they are among you. Some very likely in this room right now. They will come forth," Chester said, turning and standing aside so the crowd could look upon Tarkus in his stocks. "And every day they don't? Their friend here will lose one of his fingers. That gives them ten days. On the eleventhhe will lose his head. Spread the word. Solaire."

Solaire, who'd been standing with his mouth agape taking all of this information in, pulled out of his daze and faced the masked man. "What? You don't- surely you don't expect me to do such a vicious, cruel, thing! Tarkus is my friend! He is a good man! He-"

"He is your friend," Chester admitted. "Which is why we suspect that you are one of these dragon-worshipers."

"Preposterous!" Solaire protested. "Prove it. Cut his finger off."

"The thumb of his right hand," Kirk added. "So that way the big bastard can't swing that big bastard sword of his no more."

Solaire looked to the crowd. They were watching, some of them in horror, some with casual interest, some with a lustful look in their eye for violence. He shook his head reproachfully before turning to Abby. She'd seated herself again and was facing the far wall, not looking upon the little scene playing out before her. "Abby..." he called, and when she didn't face him, went on sternly, "If you allow this to happen, you are as responsible as the man who mutilates my friend here. Do you understand that?"

"You don't talk to her that way anymore," Chester warned, stepping between them. "She is your princess."

"Princess?" Solaire echoed incredulously.

"If you won't send a message to these cultist," Chester continued, "Abby will be forced to relieve you of your position as captain of the guard, and you will be thrown behind bars until we decide whether your loyalty lies with us or against us."

"You dare to question my loyalty you- you coward!?" Solaire snapped, his fists balling.

Chester fixed him with an even look. "Abby... he won't serve justice to the dragon-worshiper and he looks to be on the verge of striking one of us. Your permission to detain the knight?"

Solaire's eyes flicked from Chester to Abby. "...Abby..." he croaked from his suddenly dry throat.

The girl turned to him. There were tears falling from her dark-ringed eyes. "Solaire... they would see me dead," she said, her voice trembling. "They want to assassinate me. They want to give Lordran to the dragons! You have to see how... how terrible they are."

"This isn't right," Solaire pleaded with her. "To mutilate this man makes us just as savage as any dragon-worshiper, I assure you of that!"

"Forget it, Solaire," Tarkus said. "The girl is as mad now as Havel the Rock. She can't be reasoned with. Let 'em take my finger. I'll use the other nine to crush their feeble bones later."

"...I'm not mad..." Abby protested quietly.

Chester moved quickly to her side and seated himself, taking her hand in his own and kissing at it. He leaned forth and whispered in her ear. Abby listened, nodding, and when the masked man pulled away, she looked at Solaire. "Brave Knight of the Sun," she addressed him loud enough for the great hall to hear. "I..." her voice grew shaky, but Chester rubbed his thumb along her hand til she calmed and went on. "I deem you unfit to captain Logan's guard if you will not serve his justice." A tear swelled in her eye and rolled down her cheek. "Will you serve his justice? ...please," she added in a quiet, desperate, voice.

Solaire stared at her for a long time then. She is lost, he realized as her hands trembled and her eyes flittered nervously around the hall. "No," he answered with a defiant shake of his head. "I will not."

"Seize him," Chester commanded, leaned into Abby, and whispered something.

Abby swiped tears from her cheeks and rose from her chair. "I... I appoint the Knight of Thorns, Kirk, to captain of Logan's guard. He is to... assume all of Knight Solaire's responsibilities immediately."

"About time," Kirk muttered. He bowed, accepting the position, pulled a dagger free from a sheath at his hip, and sauntered before Tarkus whistling his cheerful tune from before. Without hesitation, he leaned down, took the man's right hand in his own, and set the blade where Tarkus' big thumb met his big palm.

"Wait!" Abby pleaded, moving forth so quickly, she nearly collapsed from the exertion. When Chester had taken hold of her to steady her again, she pointed a trembling finger at Tarkus. "We can afford one day for this man, can't we? One day? You can... you can do that tomorrow. Give the dragon- worshipers one day to come forth before doing any... any bad things to this man."

A reproachful look passed between Chester, Kirk, and Petrus so quickly, Solaire would have missed it if he had blinked.

"Please," Abby begged Chester.

Chester's words came quietly and harshly. "You don't beg us, Abby. You're in command here. Don't weaken yourself before the people. Letting this man go unpunished today? That is weakening yourself as well."

"I don't care!" Abby shouted.

"She's tired," Petrus said.

"Aye, put the girl to bed," Kirk agreed.

"I'm not tired," Abby protested. "And even if I was I couldn't sleep anyway!"

"Are yeh cuttin' his finger off er not?" An older man barked from the crowd. "Cez' if yer not, I got a meal gettin' cold here."

Chester held Abby's rheumy eyes for a moment before turning to the crowd. "No," he answered, the disappointment evident in his tone. "Your princess and Chosen hero has decided to be merciful today to this man. She has a kind heart. Tomorrow, however, he loses two fingers if the dragon-worshipers have not come forth or if someone has not provided us with information leading to their capture. Go back to your damned meals."

When the crowd had resumed their chatter and the dais had calmed, Kirk and Petrus stepped to either side of Solaire. Solaire fixed them both with a shrewd look before facing Abby to question what was to become of him. Chester noticed him, flipped his mask partially up his face, took the girl by the chin, and covered her mouth with his own.

"Let's go, knight," Petrus said, taking Solaire's arm.

Kirk grabbed the other violently. "Fight me, Solaire. I dare you. I'm the bloody captain of the guard now. I'll break you. Heh."

The two wrestled Solaire down the stone stairs of the dais and hauled him back towards the rear entrance of the great hall. Solaire stole one more glance at Abby, but the girl was still engaged with Chester. She's not completely lost just yet, he thought as they pulled him through the passage. But it will certainly not be me who saves her now. Not from a dungeon cell, at least. May the Sun watch over the both of us.

Halfway down the passage, when they were far enough from the great hall to go undisturbed, Kirk spun Solaire into the wall and drove his knee into his gut. The wind raced from Solaire as he crumbled to his knees, but his lack of breath became the least of his worries.

The two of them savagely beat him then, driving their armored knees and elbows and fists into his face and body, shoving him to the ground, holding his face to the stone as they kicked at his ribs. Pain wracked every inch of him as they pummeled him into the floor. When at last the darkness came to steal away his consciousness, it was the first time Solaire could remember that he welcomed it.

Chapter 26

The sky was black and the streets of Anor Londo were filled with the dead; the stench of their rotting corpses hanging so thickly in the air, the foul smell became a presence in itself. Men hung limp, impaled on spikes, the skin stripped from their bodies. Women lay piled against buildings, throats cut clean in half, heads drooping forth to their chests. The girl stepped warily forth, wrapping her arms so tightly to her body, her joints began to ache, but refusing to loosen her hold anyway; if she did, she knew the fear would overcome her, knew that she would be lost. Wind ripped forth from the South so violently, she nearly toppled over. It swept past the hanging men, sending their tattered clothing into a wild dance before gathering above the Great Chapel and coalescing into a swirl of snow and ice and death. The girl lost her footing and fell to her knees in the snowfall, clutching desperately to her robes for fear they would strip free as the men's skin had. Hollow soldiers began clawing up from the depths of Izalith, burrowing through the ground around, eyes red, hands twisted into hooves, teeth sharp and dripping with the black blood of the innocent.

From the rooftops, a scream of shrill, hysterical, laughter boomed out across the death-plagued streets, and when the girl lifted her head, she saw clusters of headless gargoyles were swooping free from the chapel's bell tower, descending into the swirl of snow towards her, coming to take her, coming to claim her. It was only as they neared that she saw they were, in fact, not headless at all, but had the heads of men and women sewn to their scaled necks instead. The girl screamed a soundless scream as the faces approached and took form. She saw the face of Quelana, Solaire, Chester and Logan, and finally, her own face.

Talons tightened around her wrists and arms and pulled. The girl's knees and feet lifted from the snows, and then she was being carried forth to the chapel as the army of hollows beneath her broke into a thundering chant of 'Chosen, Chosen, Chosen'. She screamed and pleaded and cried and screamed again, but if her mouth made any sound, it was lost in that mad chanting. The Great Chapel's doors burst open, a blinding white light erupting from within, and the dark silhouette of a man with a seven- pointed crown atop his head stepped forth, arms spread wide in welcome. Behind him, two more figures joined at his flanks, one massive and round and wielding a giant hammer, the other tall and thin and carrying a long, pointed, spear that stood taller than himself.

"Chosen," the three whispered in unison. "Come."

She tried to say no, but her jaw was numb and she couldn't be sure she'd replied at all. She could feel the gargoyle's talons tearing her skin apart at the arms.

"Come," the voices whispered, and now the sound came from all around

her, from the men in the chapel to the hollows beneath her to the gargoyles overhead, they spoke with the same, hushed, malicious, voice. "You come. Or we come."

-o-o-o-

Abby rose in bed trembling, a cold sweat thick upon her brow and arms, sticking the sheets to them, and for one mad moment, she thought the sheets themselves had come alive and were trying to wrap her in their hold. She kicked desperately at them, clawing the things loose from her chest, and rolled out of bed. She dashed madly across the room, the stone floor as cold as ice on her bare feet, shoved open the door to the bathing chambers, and fell to her knees just in time to vomit into the bath.

When it was finished, she clawed at the edges of the bath to clamber back to her feet, her knees weak and feeling on the verge of buckling as she did so, and crossed slowly to the mirror, where the room's sole candle flickered orange light beside it. She stood for a moment, pulling long breaths to still her thundering heart, and staring at her own reflection. She barely recognized the woman who stared back her with her thinning cheeks and darkened eyes and short hair, but when she raised a hand to check if the thing was an illusion, the reflection did the same, and Abby knew it was no sorcerer's trick: this was her.

We're out of time, she thought, taking the bucket of fresh water beneath the mirror to wash and rinse her mouth of the vile taste the vomit had left within. I'm out of time and Logan's out of time and there's only one thing left to be done. She stared at her reflection, refusing to let the tears threatening her eyes to fall. You will be brave, she told herself. You will not cry.

Chester was leaned against the headboard of the bed when she returned, his arms folded across his bare chest as he watched her. The first night she'd let him share her bed, he'd followed her to the bath chamber and sat beside her as she vomited from her nightmares. The second time it happened, he'd only called in asking if she was alright. By now, he only looked mildly annoyed that she'd woken him, and didn't even bother saying anything upon her return. She didn't say anything either, only moved to the room's closet, opened it, and began rummaging through the clothing there for the warmest attire she could find.

"What are you doing?" Chester asked.

"I have to leave, Chester," Abby told him, her voice hoarse and weak and barely sounding like her own anymore. "I have to go."

"Go?" Chester echoed, and her words had finally stirred him enough to sit up in bed. "Abby, what are you talking about?"

"We're out of time," she explained, spotting a pair of heavy boots with

wool insulation and grabbing them. "I'm out of time. I'm sorry. Tell Logan I'm sorry, too."

"Stop," he told her, and when she did not, he rose and crossed to her, taking her wrists in his hands. "Abby, I said stop."

"Please release me," she said, keeping calm. "You don't understand."

"I understand you're having these nightmares," Chester said. "But that is all they are, my princess. Nightmares. They will pass. Logan said so himself. Come back to bed."

"They're not just nightmares!" Abby insisted, tugging at her wrists, wishing she had the strength to free herself. "Chester... if I don't leave soon, maybe- maybe even if I don't leave right now, the darkness that lies in Anor Londo is going to march on this castle! I won't... I will not be responsible for these people's deaths! I won't!" She insisted and felt tears threatening her eyes again. She fought them away with a deep breath. "Please let my wrists go."

"You're talking mad, Abby," Chester said, his tone darkening. "If you go to them, you will die. Do you understand that? You will die."

"You don't think I know that!?" Abby shouted, more loudly than she intended, and pulled at her arms again. "I don't want to die, but..." Her voice grew shaky and the tears could no longer be kept from the corner of her eyes. "I don't want to die," she repeated as they fell to her cheeks. "But I have to."

Chester stared at her, frowning. "We'll discuss this in the morning. You, me... Logan as well."

"We might not have til morning!" Abby explained.

"Abby, I love you, I've told you as much many times now, and I'm telling you now, for your own good, I will not let you go wandering out in the freezing cold in the middle of the bloody night to go to Anor Londo!"

"If you love me as much as you claim, you'll let me do as I choose," Abby insisted. "Now let me go, Chester." She ripped at her wrists, and when he did not loose them, she shouted again, "Let GO!"

His hand came across her face so suddenly, she had no time to brace for its impact. The slap stung her cheek, blacked her vision momentarily, and when it returned, she saw she had fallen to the floor. Her hand reached tenderly to her face and her mouth fell agape as she stared up at him. "How... how could you that to me..." she croaked. "How could you treat me like this!?"

"Calm yourself," he said, turning from her to rummage through the closet himself. "It was only a slap. And you needed it. You're not thinking clearly.

Logan will fix that tomorrow." He pulled a pair of belts from the top shelf and faced her.

Abby was still so stunned from the slap, she could only watch as he lowered himself beside her and wrapped her ankles together with one of the belts. "S-stop," she muttered meekly, but when she tried crawling away from him, he tightened his grip on her legs, finished the job, and spun her to pull her arms behind her. "Please," she pleaded as he bound her wrists with the other belt. "Chester, please don't do this to me. I won't leave anymore. I won't disobey you. Please don't bind me!"

"You'll thank me later," Chester said, and when he'd finished her wrists, stood, scooped her up below the knees and shoulders, and carried her back to the bed. He set her back where she'd been and stood over her, fixing her with a stern look from his dark eyes. "I've been very patient with you, Abby. I've listened to all your nonsense about Anor Londo and treated you as good as you could hope a man would in this new cold world of ours. And Gods know I've been patient in here," he said, pointing at the bed. "You won't even let me touch you. I'm a man, Abby. I have needs. And yet I put up with it. Day after day I put up with it. Do you know how good of a man I am to do all this for you?"

"A very good man," Abby replied immediately, her heart racing fearfully in her chest. "Please untie me."

"I'll free you in the morning," he said, moving to his side of the bed and lowering himself back into it. "Just lie there tonight. If I see you trying to free yourself, I'll lock you in the bath chamber. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she whispered as a fresh crop of tears dampened the pillow beneath her head. "I understand."

Lies, she thought as Chester pulled the covers back over himself and closed his eyes. His love... his kindness... all lies. I am alone. I am utterly and truly alone. The thought awoke such a profound sorrow in her heart, she felt as if she would die there and then, lying bound hand and foot in her own bed. When the feeling passed, she sniffled and rubbed her face against the pillow to dry her cheeks. She lied there for a long time, a hopeless despair her only company in the darkness, so thickly laid across her mind she could barely muster a thought in her head. It was the sound of Chester's deep breathing beside her that snapped her out of it. She glared hatefully at him. This world is covered in barbs, and if you aren't wary, it will tear you apart, Lautrec's voice spoke clearly in her head, the distant echo of a long-ago told warning. How right he was, Abby thought as the tears finally ceased leaking from her eyes. She studied the dark outline of Chester's face, watched it to ensure he was truly sleeping, and slowly began bending back her knees, moving her ankles up towards her hands. When he stirred, she halted, when his breath went on, so did she, and soon enough her fingers fell to the belt's leathery surface around her feet. After a moment of fumbling for the buckles, she found it, worked

her fingers beneath it, and popped it free.

Chester turned on his side, but his eyes remained shut, his breathing heavy. Abby rubbed her feet together, freeing them from the belt, and slowly swung them off the bed. When they hit the ground, Abby froze, biting at her lip and watching the ebb and flow of Chester's body as he slept, vigilant for any sudden movement. In took a good while, but eventually she had worked herself free from beneath the covers and off of the bed. She stood over him, hating him, wishing she'd never trusted him in the first place, then stalked across the room to the door, turned to find its handle with her still-bound hands, and pulled it carefully open as to not make any sound.

The hall outside the room was quiet and empty. Who can I turn to to free me? She thought, balling her fists at the small of her back, frustrated by how helpless she was. Voices drifted near from the bend at the far end of the hall, and Abby rushed herself into the nook of the doorway to hide. She peeked out and watched two armored men pass by, took a breath, and moved off to follow them. They pressed further into the Archive's labyrinth of hallways, Abby hiding herself in every shadow she could find as she trailed along, and eventually wound down a spiraling staircase.

It was as she was watching them from its top, leaned out over the barrier to spy the top of their heads, when a voice came from behind her shoulder, "You lost, girl?"

She spun, her eyes landing on the thin frame of a young man in studded leather armor and a steel cap. A spear stood against the ground at his side, the man resting against it. Did he see my hands? Abby wondered, staring at him. "I-... I could not sleep. I'm not lost. I just... went for a walk. I'm alright."

He eyed her shrewdly, running his tongue along his bottom lip. After an eternity, his shoulders came up in a shrug. "Alright then," he said. "Just, eh, be careful, alright?"

"Yes," Abby answered immediately. "Yes, thank you."

The guard walked off and she watched him go. When he disappeared around the corner, Abby let the breath she'd been desperately holding loose. They are all against you, she thought. You are alone. Truly alone. The thought, again, threatened to collapse her, so she pushed it from her mind, composed herself, and began descending the staircase. Twice she almost lost her footing, the world spinning madly around her as she teetered without her arms to balance herself, and by the time she found level ground, the cold sweat she'd awoken with had returned to her. She moved to the arched doorway, leaning graciously against the wall and watched the halls for movement as she caught her breath. Distant chatter could be heard coming from the Great Hall. Abby stared towards the sound, checked warily over her shoulder and down the opposite side of

the hall, and hurried off towards it.

When she'd pressed to the shadowed wall beside the entrance, she found a smattering of people within, those likely who could not sleep like her, or whose jobs required them to rest by daylight and work by night. No one grouping was any larger than the other, and after a long moment searching desperately for someone she could rely on-briefly, and then be done with-her gaze fell upon the white-robed figure of the priestess Rhea sitting alone at a nearby table, reading from a book. You've shared words with that women, she told herself. She was kind to you and you to her, and there's not another familiar face in the room. Without further debate, she moved into the Great Hall, moving briskly but not quite running and keeping her hands angled away from any curious eyes that may have fallen upon her.

"Lady Rhea," she whispered when she came before the woman. "I require your assistance. Please do not ask me any questions."

Rhea looked up from her book, the woman's brow raising above her comely face. She eyed Abby up curiously before saying, "Abby? What-"

Abby sat beside her. "Please. No questions."

"A-Alright? I don't understand-" Rhea stopped, looked over Abby's shoulder, and when her eyes returned , there was a shrewd look in them. "Are you alone?"

Abby turned on the bench so her back was to the priestess. "Could you release my hands please," she pleaded, and when the woman did not immediately do so, thought, I've made a mistake.

"Hold on a second," Rhea told her, then raised her voice to call across the room, "Rickert. Could you come here?"

"You know what? Never mind," Abby said and began to raise. The woman took her arm and held her seated. Lautrec's phantom-voice spoke in her head once again: There will come a day when your trust in others will be your undoing girl. "Please let me go, lady Rhea."

"Be still, Abby, I mean you no harm," Rhea said, firming her grip.

Rickert, who'd pulled himself from a group of young men he'd been clearly entertaining with a tale, came halfway to the table before his mouth fell agape. "Abby?" He said as he drew near. "Rhea... what the hell-"

"The girl's come to us with a problem," Rhea said. "It seems someone has tried to kidnap her."

Rickert craned his neck to look at Abby's hands. "Is that so?"  
"No," Abby said. "No, please. I made a mistake. I'll just go back to my room.

You don't have to-"

"We'll protect you, Abby," Rhea said. "Just be quiet a moment and come with us."

Rickert moved beside her and hooked his arm around hers as Rhea stood and took up her other one. When she was between the two, they started walking her back towards the hall. Abby shook her head desperately. "Don't do this to me, please," she begged, glancing back at those who remained in the Great Hall, wondering what they'd do if she screamed for their aid. "I have to go! Doesn't anyone understand that!? I have to leave! You'll all die if I stay! You'll all die!" She shouted, so overcome with her frustraion she twisted violently in their grasp.

"Shhh," Rhea hissed. The woman's hand came up and clamped tightly over her mouth. "Just be calm, Abby. We are you friends. We don't serve that madman Logan. We serve... another."

Cultists, Abby realized, a sudden sense of dread making her skin crawl. They are the dragon-worshipers. They are the ones who wish to assassinate you. And you handed yourself right over to them. You stupid fool. She ripped at their arms, but she was weak from lack of both food and sleep and no match to wrestle free from the two of them. She tried shouting for help, but it sounded pitifully helpless and muffled beneath Rhea's hand.

When they'd gotten her out of the Great Hall, Rickert moved to her feet, scooped them up into the pit of his arm, and Rhea wrapped an arm around her chest, keeping one hand securely atop her mouth. They carried her like that down the hall, ignoring her pathetic squirming and fighting and muffled protests, and after a few twists and turns, hauled her inside a room and slammed the door shut behind them.

A small and dark room, only a table, two chairs, and a bed at the far end furnishing it, awaited. Rhea and Rickert hauled her to the bed and dropped her atop it. "Someone help me! PLEASE!" Abby wailed, scurrying back to the headboard to distance herself from the two of them. "The cultists are in here!"

"Cultists?" Rickert echoed, raising a brow. "Not the worst thing I've ever been called, but far from the best."

"Please don't scream anymore, Abby," Rhea pleaded. "Or I'll be forced to gag your mouth."

The priestess stepped closer and Abby threw a desperate kick at the woman. "Stay away from me! You're against me! You're all against me! I made a mistake. I shouldn't have told him. I should have just left... I made a mistake. I'm alone now... I'm alone."

"You poor thing..." Rhea said quietly. "What did they do to your mind?"

Abby's fear turned to anger. She set her eyes upon the woman and glowered. "Don't you pity me. Let me go!"

"Can't do that," Rickert said with a shrug. "Sorry. We can maybe talk about getting that belt off your wrists if you calm yourself down, though."

"Remove it. I'm calm," Abby snapped.

"As convincing as that was," Rickert went on with a roll of his eyes. "Maybe we just sit here and talk for a bit, hm?

"We mean you no harm, Abby," Rhea said. "We do walk the Path of the Dragon, you are correct in that, but we would never assassinate someone. That sounds like Logan's words poisoning your mind."

Liars, a voice hissed inside her head, and it didn't sound entirely unlike Logan's. Abby forced herself to appear calm. "Alright. I'm sorry for calling you cultist. I'm sorry for struggling against you when you only meant to help me. I won't fight you anymore. I promise." Her eyes flicked to the dagger at Rickert's hip and that voice spoke again, Kill yourself. Kill yourself and you'll return to the bonfire outside the castle. Dying was not a pleasant experience, but she'd done it twice now and what harm could a third do? "If you untie my hands, I swear I will behave and we can talk. Please, they hurt very badly."

"The fact that your such a bad liar means you don't do it often," Rickert said. "Which is a good thing. But we can't let you loose in your state of mind. You got this.. crazy 'Havel the Rock' sort of look going on."

Abby's fists were balled so tightly behind her, she had cut into her palms with her own nails. She looked frantically around the room for something to aid her. Rhea took another step closer. Demons, Abby thought, eyeng the woman. These are are a different sort of demons than the ones in my nightmares, but they are demons nonetheless. When Rhea moved in range, Abby shouted and drove her foot into the woman's stomach. Rhea doubled over gasping for air as the kick connected. Rickert dashed forth to grab her, but she lifted her knee just in time to catch his chin, dazing him. Abby scrambled off the bed, nearly tumbling to the floor without her arms to steady her, but found her footing and made a mad sprint to the door.

She was three feet from it when it opened.

Quelana stood before her.

"No..." Abby whispered, freezing in place and staring at the witch in black robes before her. She blinked and Quelana's body became that of a gargoyle's, but when she blinked again, it had vanished. "You're... an illusion..."

"Abby," Quelana said, putting her hand out and stepping forth.

Abby backed away. "Get away! You're not real. The real Quelana abandoned me. Abandoned me like she abandoned her sisters! You're a gargoyle! A demon!"

Quelana's face contorted with confusion. "A demon? Abby, please, listen to me-"

"We're all going to die in this castle," Abby cut her off. "Unless you stand aside right now. Get out of my way. Get out! GET OUT!" Rickert and Rhea took hold of her arms. "NO!" Abby wailed, twisting in their grasp. "NO! LET ME GO! YOU LET-" A thick cloth fell between her lips and pulled tight, silencing her screams.

"Don't hurt her!" Quelana pleaded. "She needs help!"

"I'm not trying to!" Rickert snapped. "She's bloody mad!"

Abby wailed into the gag and felt warm tears trailing down her cheeks. Mad, she thought, and the word sounded so funny in her own head, she nearly laughed. Perhaps she was laughing. It was hard to tell: crying and laughing were so similar. They are the mad ones, she thought as Rhea and Rickert wrestled her into a chair. They are the mad ones and they are the ones who will die when the hollows march and the darkness of Anor Londo spreads across this castle like a plague and they will die and they will die and they will die and I won't help them. I won't help them because I am alone.

Utterly and truly alone.

Chapter 27

The Duke's Archives rose from the mountains and trees at its base to loom over the western horizon. Its myriad of towers and curved architecture kept the heaviest snowfall from gathering too thickly, but every windowsill was lightly dusted, every pane of glass layered in a blue frost, and every stone and brick laid into the castle walls looked haggard and ready to crumble should a harsh wind take them too severely.

It was dusk when Lautrec arrived before the monstrous keep, and as he stood in the knee-high snow staring upwards, he could not help a feeling of hope steal across him. There is life here, he thought, his eyes flicking across the snow-obscured outline of the castle. Where everywhere else it fails, here it goes on. Despite the Archive's outward appearance of decadence, there was lightcoming from nearly every window, casting a soft glow on the snows gathered upon the sills, and perhaps it was only his imagination, but there seemed to be a heatemanating from the keep as well, inviting and alluring and warm. When he'd passed the main overlook of Anor Londo after the cursed ride in the winged demon's talons from Sen's Fortress, the city had looked dead and dark and, quite fittingly given the rumors he'd heard, hollow. The Archive's were different, though. They were still standing; they were still alive.

Lautrec pulled his cloak tighter to his body, wrestled his boots free from the icy snows threatening to frost his feet within, and trudged forth on the path to the castle. The going was slow with the snow here heavier than anywhere else he'd encountered it in Lordran, but before night fell completely and the way shrouded entirely into darkness, he'd made his way before the long, gaping, tunnel that twisted its entrance into the Archive's.

Movement upon the castle's inner wall standing sentinel a few dozen feet back from the tunnel entrance caught his eye. Lautrec squinted, narrowing his vision upwards to the dark silhouettes gathered there. If they hadspotted him, they showed no signs of duress. He watched them stalk the wall from end to end, splitting apart, coming back together, crossing once again. When they moved out of sight the third time, he rushed forth as fast as the snow underfoot would allow, eager to hug the tunnel wall and disappear in its shadowed cover.

Now I find out if the blacksmith has made a fool of me, he thought once he'd traversed the short gap and eyed the length of wall that ran away from him in either direction. He shuffled his way beside it, trailing away from the tunnel entrance and running his hand along the icy bricks at his side. Near the rocky rise of cliff that met the elbow of the outer wall, Lautrec spotted Andre's black stone resting against a white tree; the guide the smith had left should he need return to his 'secret entrance'. Lautrec marched past the tree and halted, staring at the wall behind it. It looked

as solid as any other section of stone, but when Lautrec pressed his fingers to its surface, they slipped into it and the bricks rippled like the water had when he used to go skipping stones in Carim's ponds with-

-her, he thought, and a familiar surge of anger rose to his chest. Ana was close now and the sudden realization had stolen his breath, filled the blood beneath his skin with an itch, and blanketed his mind in a red haze of fury, blinding any rational thought from his head. Calm yourself, he commanded, pulling a deep breath of cold air into his lungs to clear his mind. You're not inside. Not yet.

His elbow vanished the same as his hand, then his arm, his leg, and soon enough, Lautrec had passed through the illusionary entrance entirely and found himself standing in a long, dark, tunnel that showed no hint of an end in sight. He stepped further within and the biting winds at his back fell away. Another few steps and the harsh sounds of the outside world grew quiet and faint and the silence that swelled around him was deafening.

When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Lautrec could make out the vague figure of the walls at his side, and squinting forth, he could see the distant glow of a torch. Blue, he thought. The torch glows blue. He'd heard legend of sorcerers enchanting torches to keep their fires burning for years, decades even, leaving them with unnatural coloring, but he'd never seen one in person, and as he neared to the thing, he heard a faint hum emitting from within its icy blue core. He halted at the torch, watching as the flames danced beneath his chin, yet when he looked to the wall at his back, he saw no shadow was cast. 'Demon's Fire' is what the priests and priestesses in Carim used to call it, and a younger Lautrec had scoffed at them and jested with his friends over their concerns. Standing before it now, though, had sent a chill along his spine, and he understood the nickname entirely. He pulled the thing from its sconce, held it before his chest, and let its queer light guide him deeper inside the tunnel.

Further along, he came upon the rotting corpse of a man, or perhaps a woman; it was impossible to tell. The skin was rotted clean from the bones, save a few patches around the head, where long wisps of white hair trickled around the thing. He lowered the torch, casting its glow upon the corpse's hands, and saw it still clutched to a book-the pages of which had decomposed into yellow, crumbling, flakes-and a talisman. Whomever is was, they were praying, he realized, lowering to a knee to pry the divine tool free from the bony hand wrapped around it. Perhaps they were lost in these tunnels with no light to guide them and turned to the last vestige of hope that remained to them: their Gods. The talisman came loose with a sudden jerk and a fresh rain of dust fell from the corpse's tattered clothing. He pocketed the thing, not entirely sure why, and went on.

As the tunnels wound their way deeper and deeper, the stone underfoot rising in places, falling in others, turning to gravel in yet others still, his

thoughts began to drift to whom exactly had dug such a queer tunnel, and why one was needed beneath the castle in the first place. He traveled over streams of water passing between barred archways, ducked to crawl forth on his hands beneath low-hanging falls of rock that clustered a section of tunnel for far longer than he'd hoped, and came upon a set of iron rungs nestled into the wall, leading him first up to a short and narrow bridge, then down to the tunnels, then down further stillinto a passage that felt far colder and somehow darker than any other he'd traversed.

He was halfway to a 'T' intersection when the blue light of his torch fell upon a corpse leaned against the wall directly in the center of the crossing. Lautrec neared it, and as its form took shape, his mouth fell agape and his skin crawled: it was the same corpse he'd passed earlier. "Impossible!" He hissed, meaning to think the word, but so overcome with doubt, the thought vocalized. He rushed forth and dropped to his knee to examine the thing. The skin was missing, the hair fell in white wisps around its skull, and a tarnished, yellowed, book hung loose in its skeletal grip. The other hand was empty, but the fingers were bent in such a way that hinted it had died grasping dearly to something.

Whispers rushed through the tunnels at his back.

Lautrec stood, spun, and thrust the torch forward into the darkness; his breath frozen in his chest, his heart pounding in unnatural rhythm, his head spinning.

Only darkness greeted him; darkness and silence. When he turned back to the corpse, it was gone. Despite the madness of it all, Lautrec laughed. Perhaps this is how Logan turned Havel's mind to ash, he thought, waving the torch towards the other two passages at his sides. Sent him down here to wander around in the dark for an eternity or two. If he stood there letting his thoughts linger, he'd likely turn just as mad, and so Lautrec pushed on.

The tunnels twisted and twisted, and he felt his mind twisting with them. The torch's blue flame began to turn his eyes sore, and he found himself wishing he'd never taken the thing. Still, he made his feet move. Twice more he saw the rotting corpse awaiting him in his path, the head tilted on its side, the mouth a gaping, black, hole frozen in a soundless scream, but both times he refused to look at the thing, marching past, one hand resting on the hilt of his shotel. He came upon the ladder rungs leading up to the bridge again, though he'd never turned back in his travels, and quickly made the ascent and descent once more. It can only turn you mad if you let it, he told himself as he lowered to the other side. And you won't let it. You will not.

"Lautrec," Anastacia whispered.

Lautrec froze, his hand still clutching the last rung of the ladder, the knuckles ran white as bone. He stilled his breath, set aside his fear, and

turned to face the tunnel.

Ana stood there in her dingy robes. Her skin was a ghostly pale, and there was blood leaking from her eyes. She opened her mouth and a tongue, a foot long and as black as his parent's bodies had been when he'd found their cooked corpses in their bed so many years ago, rolled loose from within, licking at her chin and neck.

A frantic madness threatened to shatter his mind, and so Lautrec turned his fear to anger. He ripped one of his shotels free, bellowed a warcry, and charged her. Anastacia did not move as he approached, only stood there, her black tongue lashing about on her face, staring at him from blood- soaked eyes that housed no pupils. He lowered his shoulder and drove her backwards when he neared. She stumbled, tripped, and landed seated against the tunnel wall there. Lautrec wasted no time: he threw the torch to the ground, wrapped both hands around his shotel, and began hacking away at her body and her arms and her face and her tongue - that black, serpent's, thing that lashed like a demon's and had stolen everything from him. At a point, he began shouting, but when he could not say, and there was no stopping the shout even after he'd heard it. It, somehow, felt just as important to wield as his blade.

When he finally slowed to an exhausted halt, his arms sore from the effort, his breath coming in labored gasps, his brow thick with a cold sweat, he stared down upon Anastacia and found she was not Anastacia at all, just the same, rotted, corpse with the book in its hand from the tunnel entrance. Its mouth no longer looked gaping, it looked like it was smiling.

You won't do it, he told someone, perhaps the corpse, perhaps Anastacia, perhaps Logan, perhaps himself. You won't beat me. You won't. You won't.

"I won't what?"

Lautrec turned from the torch and spotted a man standing in the tunnels, a crossbow held at his hip and aimed Lautrec's way. Lautrec frowned and snapped his head back to the torch. The queer, blue, thing was still resting in its sconce. He turned to peer back over his shoulder, and could hear the winds raking across the walls outside, could feel the slight chill coming from the tunnel's hidden entrance. I never moved past this spot? How can that be?

"Let's go, Lautrec. He's waiting for you," the voice commanded.

He faced the man again, and in the faint torch glow, he could see a top hat resting on the man's head. "You're the one with the mask," he said. "From the bridge... Chester." But are you the illusion, or am I?

"That's right," Chester answered. "And you are making quite a bit of noise down here. You aren't seeing things are you, knight?"

Lautrec stared at him unblinking.

"Logan says he's been waiting a long time for you," Chester went on. "Follow me. The path isn't long."

"Anastacia..." Lautrec whispered, snapping his head around to find where she'd gone or where the corpse had gone or where his sanity had, perhaps, gone.

"Oh, your prize is here," Chester said. "Logan rewards his servants. Rewards us well. Come."

Lautrec didn't know what those words meant, and he scarcely even believed the man standing before him in the darkness of the tunnel was real, but he weighed his options, took one last glance at the queer, icy, light of the enchanted torch, and moved forth to follow him all the same.

They did not speak as they walked. Lautrec kept behind the man, his hands resting atop the hilts of his blades, his eyes keeping vigil for any further madness, so that he may snuff it before it took his mind entirely. They passed the place where he'd first spotted the corpse (Ana?) and found the area empty. They climbed the ladder, crossed the bridge, climbed back down, and the tunnel ended; as short and pitiful as that, it ended. A rectangular peg of soft light gave way to what looked like a library.

"What trick took my mind in that tunnel?" Lautrec asked, the dreamy fog that had veiled his thoughts lifting as he stepped beneath the passage.

Chester turned to face him, and in the library's harsh lighting, he could see the man's dark eyes gleaming delightedly beneath his jester's mask. "You assume it was a trick? I don't know what you saw down there... ghosts? Monsters? Demons? Hm, perhaps you truly are losing your mind, Lautrec." He snickered. "It would be a shame for you to come all this way to-"

Lautrec shoved the man against the bookshelf at his back, pressed his forearm into his throat, and hooked his fingers beneath the chin of the mask. He ripped it free, exposing a stunned expression upon Chester's face. Lautrec held him in place, dropped the mask to his feet, and cracked it clean in half beneath his boot. Chester opened his mouth, but Lautrec pressed deeper into his throat and the only sound that escaped his lips was a choked gurgle. "You think I'm mad and you have the courage to taunt me? You must be a very foolish man. The last foolish man I trusted stuck a blade in my side and threw me over a bridge. I won't make the same mistake twice." He reached his free hand to his shotel and pulled it loose from its sheath. Chester's eyes widened in terror as the blade pressed to his cheek.

Lautrec eased up enough so he could muster a few words. "Piss... on that... knight... you kill me... and Logan... will- urk!"

"You forget that I haven't been living in this castle as the rest of you have," Lautrec explained. "I don't fear Logan."

"You'll never... see... Ana..."

Lautrec let him go. Chester crumpled to the floor, clutching at his throat and gasping for breath. When it had returned to him, he cradled the broken halves of his mask. "Get up," Lautrec commanded, "And take me to him." When the man did not immediately do as told, Lautrec grabbed him by the arm, yanked him to his feet, and shoved him to the room's sole doorway. "Move."

Chester glanced over his shoulder very briefly, and in the man's eyes Laurtec saw a burning contempt. His fist wrapped around the hilt of his blade and an itch took his arm, begging him to hack the man into bits. It's being this close to Ana, he realized, stilling his rage. Her presence has awoke something in me... something that will need to be controlled. For now. Chester started moving. Lautrec followed.

He'd been in the Duke's Archives before, in some other life, and hadn't found them impressive then and didn't find them impressive now. They walked on passing lots of books, plenty of tables and chairs, and little else. A few people that had gathered around the library's upper balcony cast curious looks their way, but they moved otherwise uninterrupted. Chester moved beneath an arched passage that spilled into a Great Hall, and when Lautrec followed him in, he saw a cluster of men in heavy armor gathered at a longtable look their way. The tall, thorn-armored, man he'd bested on the Burg bridge days earlier was chief among them, sitting there staring at Lautrec, his mouth agape, his face blank and just as ugly as Lautrec remembered it.

"What the-" Kirk began in, but Chester raised a hand and shook his head.

"Logan doesn't want him disturbed."

Kirk's eyes narrowed on Lautrec, his glare housing as much hatred as the crossbowmen's had. At least I won't lack for enemies in these walls, he thought, returning the knight's glare with an even-tempered look.

"Chester... where's your mask?" Kirk asked when his eyes returned to his friends, and the whole longtable's interest was suddenly piqued. They stood and craned their necks to get a look at the man.

Chester pulled his coat collar up as high as it would go to shield himself, but offered no response.

They walked out of the great hall, climbed a spiraling tower of stairs, and hooked around the upper library to set foot into the cold, outer, balcony that twisted its path alongside the inner wall before ending in a tall, wide- set, door. Chester halted, turned, and nodded to the entrance. "Go on."

Lautrec's eyes flicked from the door to the man. "After you."

"This is as far as I go," Chester told him. The lanky man sauntered forward, ignoring Lautrec's raised shotel, and shouldered his way past. When he was nearly lost around a bend, he turned back in the falling snows and called out, "Bring her back to us, knight. You bring her back."

He vanished around the edge of wall and Lautrec thought on his words only briefly before stepping to the door and shoving it open. A steep drop awaited him, a ladder sticking up over the edge of its fall. Lautrec lowered himself to it and climbed. I've been here before, he thought as he listened to the thudding coming from somewhere deeper in the tower; a flat, pounding, noise that produced no echo. His feet hit solid ground and he released the ladder, turned, and faced a winding set of stairs that wrapped the tower's wall in a spiraling descent. I knew those stairs would be there. He walked them, refusing his eyes to fall upon the blue torches that hung ensconced along the path lest they warp his mind and bring him back to those maddening tunnels beneath the castle. The climb will be long. It was; the stairs twisting deeper and deeper, emptied prison cells on his right, the emptiness of the tower's center on his left. There will be a loose stone beneath my left foot. A moment later, the ground shifted beneath him as a loose stone came free underfoot. And here, he thought, coming around a bend. The stairs end and the madness begins.

The tower's bottom level flattened out in a massive circle. There were pillars marching around the perimeter in guard, more bookshelves at the walls behind them, and in the middle of it all, an enormous machine stood erect twenty feet high, an amalgamation of cogs and bars and steel and wood and-

-blood, he thought. There will be blood spilled here.

Nine crystal golems, each coated in a thick layer of icy blue armor, were staring at him. They were hulking, eyeless, monstrosities, and yet Lautrec felt no fear. In fact, he found his feet carrying him right past them, their giant heads turning languidly to watch him pass. A wooden desk, half- buried in books and tomes, was nestled into a nook at the end of the room, candle light flickering madly around it in disorganized patterns. Lautrec sidled by a stack of books and sat himself in a chair immediately.

"No," he said.

Logan was seated across from him. The man raised his head, the insanely wide brim of his hat wobbling as he did, and when the candlelight reached his shadowed face, a smile sat there; innocuous and inviting. "No?" He echoed.

"You were going to ask if I wanted a drink, weren't you?"  
Logan's head cocked ever-so-slightly on its side. "Perhaps I was." His smile

widened. "But the moment is gone, lost, and a fresh one begins, so let us not dwell on the past, but revel in the present. Hello, Lautrec," His arm reached across the table, and in the light his skin looks sallow and sagging from his bones. His nails were yellowed and long.

Lautrec did not take his hand. "I only shake hands with men I respect."

Logan's smile did not waver. He simply nodded, pulled his hand back, and leaned into his chair. "Fair enough, good knight. Fair enough. You know, I've been waiting a very long time for you."

"Why?"

"To reward you."

"For what?"

Soft laughter, almost childlike, rumbled from the sorcerer's lips. "For your hard work, of course."

Lautre glared across the table. Don't let him talk, Domhnall had warned before he'd left the chapel. Just kill the madman and be done with it. "What hard work?" He asked, ignoring the merchant's voice.

"Oh, Lautrec," Logan said. "You didn't think you'd gotten here all by yourself, did you? You are a knight, after all. You know... killing and combat and weaponry... but a knight's mind is not fit to unravel the profound mysteries of this world. That is left to us old 'mad' sorcerers."

"That's not an answer to my question."

"It will be," Logan quickly retorted. "But first, let me ask you a question. Why are you here, Lautrec?"

"To kill you," he told the sorcerer, holding the man's eyes.

Logan's face wrinkled, froze, and then erupted into a hearty, joyous, laughter. "Oh, you are a blunt one, my friend. Ha! That's good. Good. I'm surrounded by liars and deceptive little rats scurrying about in my walls. It is so... refreshing to have a man look you in the eye and tell you his intentions. The rest of them?" He pursed his lips, shook his head. "They know nothing of the romanticism of life and death. They would steal your life from you in the night with a blade in your throat like cowards. But you? You are different, Lautrec. It is one of the reasons, amongst many, I chose you." Logan poured himself a chalice of red wine and sipped at it. "It was I who awoke your mind to the prison it is held in, friend. It is I who researched and researched this world over and over, desperately looking for some answer I didn't even know the question to. And when I found it, I set in motion a plan that has led us both to this very moment seated across from one another. Isn't that exciting? To think of all the work that is behind this moment? And look at us! Either one of us could steer the

future of Lordran in a whichever direction we see fit."

The man paused, apparently awaiting a response. Lautrec did not give him one.

"Do you remember lying awake in your little cell in the church attic, Lautrec?" Logan asked. "Do you remember? Trapped for a crime you had not yet committed. A shame. You spent an awfully long time in there. A lesser man might have been driven mad. You're no lesser man, though. You're a man who gets things done. A man who would cut down five other men in his path, just to get closer to what he desires. That's the sort of thing I sought. That's the sort of thing I found. Found in you! Hmmm. If you close your eyes, can you still hear my words, knight? Whispering in the darkness, telling you of a world that has imprisoned you in its endless cycle? A world that has, unjustly, tormented your very soul for the Gods satisfaction? Can you still hear my warning, Lautrec? Go, I whispered. Go and get the witch and take the crow to the Asylum. Go and bring me the next Chosen Undead. Do you remember?"

"You filled my head with all this madness?" Lautrec asked.

"Only to set you free, my friend. To set us both free. See, we were both men born into slavery. Me in my cage at Sen's Fortress, you in yours at the church. The creators locked us away, the two of us, and do you know why? So that we would see. See a physical representation of a world that has locked around us and shackled us to its floor. But we are hard-working men, aren't we? We are determined men. And we defied our creators and set ourselves free and now we stand on the cusp of changing the world of Lordran - FOREVER!"

The man's shout had pulled Lautrec from his daze. He narrowed his eyes upon Logan's. "So you freed yourself... came to my cell in the Parish... spoke to me as I slept... told me of all this endless cycle madness and... what? Sent me to bring you the Chosen? Why? What purpose could all of this possibly serve you?"

"Time," Logan answered. "It has bought me the time I need. If the Chosen is here, safe and sound with me, the bonfire at the Kiln of the First Flame go unlit and the world doesn't revert back." He paused, leaned forward onto the desk, and held Lautrec's eyes in his own. "And now there are those who would take the girl from me-from us-and toss away all of our hard work. There are rats in the walls, my friend, big rats that want to see us imprisoned forever. Who want to see the world recycled to what it once was. To steal the girl away from us."

"...Abby."

Logan nodded. "You and I have worked tirelessly to break this cycle and end this madness, Lautrec. We have gone to great lengths to free the people of Lordran from the bondage our creators have wrapped them in,

but they are simple creatures, my friend, and they don't understand like we do. They would take her away from this castle." He grimaced. "And send us both back to our cells."

"Lordran is dying," Lautrec told him. "None of this matters."

"Lordran is changing," Logan corrected. "Absolutes are for the weak- minded. Things don't truly begin and end, they simply change from one thing to another. If I let this wine sit uncorked it will turn to mold. Give it long enough and the mold will break apart and enter the air. Over time, people will breath it, their lungs will change it, and the wine will cease to be wine, but it will not have simply ended. Lordran is in the process of such a change. We need only to stay courageous as it happens around us."

"We'll all die," Lautrec said. "It grows too cold to live."

"Many will die," Logan agreed. "Not all. Not you. Not me. Not those who put their trust in me. I am going to break the cycle, Lautrec. That machine you passed on your way here? The creators left it for us. I believe it is a fail-safe in case one of us succeeded our limitations. The machine will offer salvation when it is complete. If you believe in me... you will live. You will live to see the great change that comes across Lordran."

"And what exactly is it you think Lordran is going to change into?"

Logan shrugged. "That's the exciting element of it all, I suppose. I don't know. Perhaps we will leave this world and coalesce with the creator's next world. Perhaps we will go to the creators themselves and live an eternity in their kingdoms."

"Perhaps we will all wither and die," Lautrec said.

Logan stared at him. "...No. The creators are not malevolent beings. The Gods that play with us, torment us, for their own, cruel, enjoyment? They are a different sort of creature. Do not mistake them with the wonderful beings that crafted all you see around you."

Lautrec sat for a moment, quietly mulling over the sorcerer's mad ramblings. "Where is Abby?"

Logan sighed. "You know, when the girl first came to me, I didn't really know what to expect. And then the prettiest, sweetest, little thing came shyly walking up to me and I knew I wanted her to live. Abby..." His face darkened. "It is a true shame what those creatures did to her head."

Lautrec sat up. "What does that mean?"

"I'm afraid the girl's mind is shattered," Logan said, smiling wanly. "She hasn't been able to sleep because of nightmares. She claims the hollows and demons of the city torment her in her sleep. I... I believe her, Lautrec. I truly do. But she is past the point of help. And now there are dragon-

worshipers in our numbers who would take her from the castle. Do you know what would happen if she left this castle? The hollows would hunt her, steal her from those cultists, and drag her off the Kiln of the First Flame in chains to kill Gwyn. All so the wretched things can go on existing. The whole cycle started over again," he said quietly with a reproachful shake of his head, "because of one girl."

"What are you saying, sorcerer. Speak it plain."

Logan sighed. "I'm saying her life has become one of constant pain and sorrow. And she only poses a threat alive." He looked across the table at Lautrec. "You and I are men who get things done. And we know what has to be done, don't we? As terrible as it is... it must be done."

Lautrec's eyes fell to his calloused, dirty, hands. He thought of the day the girl had taken a hold of them and fixed him with her little 'calming' trick. It had been... the best he'd felt since the day he came across his parents' bodies. He almost felt at peace in that moment.

"I know she likes you," Logan said. "She spoke of you highly. I imagine you might have acquired a fondness for her as well. It is hard not to. If her mind had remained in tact I would have seen her as my Queen in the next world."

Only a King would need a Queen, Lautrec thought, masking his thoughts from the sorcerer by lowering his head. Is that what you think of yourself, Logan? The 'King' of whatever comes next for Lordran should the Kiln go unlit?

"But as I said," Logan went on," her mind is broken. Death would be... a relief to her now."

"Then why haven't you killed her..." Lautrec asked.

"Because they have her," Logan growled. "Those... dragon-worshipers. They stole her from me." He rose from his chair, hobbling around the desk with a long, wooden, cane to aide him. "It is as I said, Lautrec. You are a man who can get things done. You always have been. You broke free from your cell in the church, took the witch of Izalith to aid you, retrieved the Chosen Undead from the asylum, and-one way or another-got you both here. Now I ask only that you do one more thing for me before we save Lordran from its infernal cycling. Get her. Get Abby and bring her back. Bring her here to me and... let me give the girl the peace of death."

Lautrec did not respond. He stared into the dancing flame of the candle nearest to him atop Logan's desk, thankful its light was orange and not blue.

"And when that unfortunate piece of business is complete," Logan went on. "I have your reward here. Hmm. When all the other firekeepers parished, it was I who made sure Anastacia of Astora stayed nice and safe.

And now I will give you the vengeance that you so desperately desire, Lautrec. You can... do whatever it is you want with her. I won't ask questions. Just you and her in a little room with nowhere to run. I can only imagine how... satisfying it will be for you."

Anger coursed through his blood turning his skin to fire. "Where is she?" He demanded, rising to meet Logan's eyeline beside him.

"Close," Logan said. "Bring me Abby and she is yours."

His hand fell to his shotel.

Logan's eyes flicked to it. "There's that fighting spirit I'm looking for. Cut our enemies down, knight. Cut them down like the killer you are and bring her to me."

Lautrec envisioned what Logan's face might look like if a river of blood was spilling from his neck.

His fingers danced around the hilt of his blade. Logan smiled.

"I'll be back," Lautrec told him, turning and marching away, eager to be rid of the man.

"Do you need to know where to start looking?" Logan asked over his shoulder.

"No," Lautrec said. Find Laurentius, Nico, the mad dragon-worshiper, had told him atop Sen's Fortress. He will gather the others.

That is just what I will do, Lautrec thought. Find the pyromancer... and hurt him. He shouldered past the golems, who were all staring down at him as he walked, and his eyes fell upon the massive machine in the tower's center. There will be blood spilled here, he thought again, but Abby's face, smiling and innocent, flashed in his mind, and he suddenly felt a sickness stir in the pit of his stomach. He quickly put the thought aside.

He would deal with it when the time came.

Chapter 28

Something was happening in the city of Anor Londo. There had been little to no activity when Quelana had passed the city's upper wall on her and Abby's travel from the Darkroot Gardens to the Duke's Archives, and little more had been told to her by those who walked the Path of the Dragon afterwards. From what she understood, the hollows were there, certainly, but the things were mostly quiet and remained hidden in the various buildings and chapels that lined the streets. But looking upon the city from atop the Archive's watchtower, Quelana could clearly see, partially obscured by the relentless snows, something was stirring the hollows up. The rotting things were gathering in the streets, along the bridge that ran to the upper walls, before the chapel, atop the roofs. Their numbers weren't great, but there were far more than she'd previously thought they had. You're all going to die in this castle, Abby had warned them before she'd been silenced, and watching the hollows now, a terrible sense of dread came across Quelana.

The sound of footsteps drifted from within the watchtower, and Quelana wrapped her robes closer to her body and backstepped deeper within the shadowed nook between the the tower and the parapets. She stilled her breath and listened, and soon enough the sound of a throat clearing and two coughs brought her relief. She rose and stepped cautiously around the tower's bend.

Rickert stood beneath the arched doorway, the young man's arms folded across his chest, an agitated look upon his face. Her approach stirred him only briefly, then he was heading her way, speaking in a hush voice. "No go."

Quelana's shoulders slumped forth. "Why? What's happened?"

"Our new 'wonderful' captain of the guard has doubled patrol on the prison cells," Rickert explained, breathing into his hands to warm them. "There's no sneaking in, and Rhea and I alone couldn't take Kirk and his men. We'll have to come up with something else to spring Tarkus."

"We don't have the time," Quelana said, sweeping her arm to the city below. "Abby said-"

"I don't care what the mad girl says," Rickert cut her off. "The hollows aren't marching on the Archives."

Quelana frowned. "You promised me- you all promised me we would leave here once we had Abby."

"Once we had Abby and the children," Rickert corrected. "And now, Tarkus. What? You think we'd leave him here with that sick, thorny, bastard of a knight?" He scoffed, stepped to the parapets, and gazed down

upon Anor Londo, rubbing his hands together. "Look at the sorry bunch of them. You think they can storm a castle with a few dozen? The archers alone will halve that number before they ever set one, rotting, foot inside the walls."

"It's not just about the hollows," Quelana pressed on. "There is... something bad about to happen here. Don't you feel it? First, the Knight Solaire is stripped of command and thrown in a cell, then this Logan man orders all the entrances and exits of the castle sealed and guarded? You-"

"That's because he doesn't want the girl getting away."

"And what of 'the girl'!?" Quelana snapped. "Abby's health worsens by the day. She shivers at night. She doesn't sleep. She has to be taken away from this place!"

"Hey, witch, it ain't the locations that needs fixin' - it's the girl's mind that needs a bolt tightened up or two," said Rickert. "Doesn't matter if she's here or in the Burg or, well, wherever it is you want to drag her off too."

"What about your 'dragon God'," Quelana questioned. "Can't he 'fix' her mind?"

Rickert looked at her, a sly grin coming across his face. "You don't believe that."

"I know I don't believe it, but if it will get Abby out of here-"

"It won't," Rickert said with a sigh. "Look, just sit tight for a little longer, alright? We'd all be together in a nice warm room having this discussion if Laurentius wasn't so bloody paranoid about us being watched. Just... just keep doing what you're doing. Stay with the girl, comfort her as much as you can, and we'll be gone soon enough. Those craven soldiers of Kirk's aren't taking off Black Iron Tarkus' fingers, I can tell you that much."

Quelana turned from the man, grabbed a handful of her robes, and balled it into a knot within her fist. There is no ground to be had here, she thought, her eyes sweeping the city. If I'm to see Abby away from the castle... I will be alone in my endeavor. She was wondering whether she could actually do it, with Abby likely fighting her every step of the way now that her mind had failed her, when Rickert tapped her on the shoulder.

"Tell Laurentius Rhea and I will meet him in the Great Hall in two hours to discuss our next move," he told her. "Alright?"

Quelana pressed her lips tightly together and held the man's eyes for a moment before nodding.

He returned the gesture. "Good. And... um, witch. Just... just stay hopeful, alright? We got the girl. I mean, that was going to be the hardest part of

this whole operation. The rest... well, the rest will fall into place. Sooner or later."

With that, he smiled, bowed, and spun on his heel to disappear back inside the tower. Quelana waited, finding the act of waiting more and more uncomfortable as the days drew on within the castle, and when enough time had passed for Rickert to clear out, stalked around the corner herself and headed inside.

The brief trip back to Laurentius' room was slowed only when Quelana had to hide herself from a passing guard, whose trips seemed to grow more and more frequent as of late, and then she was slipping back between the narrow opening of the door, quickly closing and locking it behind her.

Abby was where Quelana had left her, though there was little the girl could do about that; Rickert and Rhea had bound her to a wooden chair, her wrists and ankles tightened to the arms and legs of the thing, and her torso pinned in place. She had to be kept gagged with a thick cloth fastened between her lips, lest the girl's screams bring the whole castle down upon them. Quelana had tried removing the thing three times since Abby had been taken in by Rickert and Rhea, but each attempt was met with shouts and curses and words that she never would have guessed could come from the girl's mouth, which had been so sweet and kind before coming to this terrible place.

As Quelana crossed the room, Abby fixed her with a hateful glare, as was becoming custom for the girl. There was something else in those blue eyes that had once been bright and pretty, too, but Quelana could not place it. She refused to think of it as a madness, as Laurentius had whispered to her when he looked upon her the first time, but there was no denying the look was... disconcerting.

"Alright, Abby," Quelana greeted, seating herself at the bed beside the girl. She kept her voice as calm and comforting as she could, even when faced with Abby's overwhelming hatred. "I'd like you to drink some water. Can you do that for me?"

Her glare was her only response.

Quelana sighed, and ran the back of her hand along the girl's forehead, where loose strands of chestnut-brown hair were coming back and falling to her brow. Her skin, at least, was without fever. Quelana had seen plenty of her pupils come down with sicknesses in Blighttown that had left their skin as hot as flame.

She rose, crossed to the window where a bucket of snow had melted into cool water, and returned to fill a mug. "Please don't shout when I remove this," Quelana pleaded, raising her free hand to the gag. "Abby, you know it won't do you any good. Just quietly have a drink of this and then

perhaps we can speak. Alright?"

Again, the girl only glared. The look seemed so foreign upon her face, it was almost as if it were someone else seated beside Quelana. When the gag came loose, falling loosely around her slender neck and collarbone, Quelana braced for the worst. Abby did not scream, however. Instead, she eyed the mug of water longingly until Quelana brought it to her lips. She allowed it to be tipped back into her mouth and began drinking in short gulps. When the water had been all but emptied, she leaned forth, spilling the last of it onto her chin and upper chest. Quelana took the mug away and quickly dried the girl with the hem of her robes. When she finished, Abby was staring at her quietly. The anger had dissipated from her eyes, but there was a queer deadness to them as she spoke in a coarse, monotonous, voice, "Thank you, Quelana. I feel much better now. In fact, I think I understand what I did to be put in this chair. I'm sorry. Can you let me go now? I won't do it again."

Quelana frowned. Somehow, the flat sound of Abby's voice along with her hollow stare had put more of a dread in her then gazing upon Anor Londo had. "I... don't think that's wise, Abby."

The girl's lip curled ever so slightly. "Oh? Why not, Quelana?"

"I don't think you're well yet," Quelana explained, laying her hand on Abby's and gently stroking it.

"I am. I promise. Please untie me."

Again, the utter strangeness of her tone was unsettling. It was as if she were reading from a book instead of speaking her own words. Quelana shook her head. "No, Abby."

Abby stared at her then for a long time. Her mouth curled into what might have been a snarl if she's had the strength to fully form one. "You're a liar and an imposter," she said, her eyes widening. "You killed the real Quelana and now you're trying to kill me too. Assassins! That's what you are. All of you. You cultists! You cravens! You're going to die." She laughed a bizarre, mirthless, laugh. "You're going to die for what you're doing to me."

"Abby," Quelana began, desperate to make the girl understand she wasn't her enemy.

"Don't speak to me like you know me," Abby cut her off. "You-... perhaps you might be the real Quelana. And perhaps, oh, yes. Perhaps you were with them the whole time. You sabotaged us, didn't you? You led us right to these cultists of yours. Yes. You treacherous thing, you. You're no human. You're a coward and a sneak and a witch!"

Quelana took a breath, forcing herself calm. "I won't let your anger turn me away. I won't abandon you."

"Why not? Because you pretend I'm one of your witch sisters and you're trying to make right your betrayal of them?" Abby snapped, and when Quelana fixed her with a hurt look, the girl grinned. "That's it, isn't it? This whole time. You only looked after me to use me! Just like you'd have these cultists use me! Well, I won't be used! I'm not one of your sisters, you witch, I'm a human! Do you hear me!? I'm NOT your SISTER!" Quelana moved behind her to fasten the gag back in her mouth and Abby began ripping at her bound limbs. "You can't keep me here forever! I'll-MMPH!"

"I'm sorry," Quelana said as Abby thrashed about the chair the most she could in her weakened state. She seated herself beside the girl once again and took hold of her hand to comfort her. Abby was huffing and puffing beneath the gag from her exertion, and the fiery glare had returned to her eyes, but Quelana only stroked her hand and looked upon her with sympathy.

The two of them remained seated like that for a long time: Abby slowly calming herself upon clearly realizing the helplessness of her situation; Quelana watching her, deep in thought, wondering if she did manage to steal the girl away from this terrible place, if her mind could ever be mended. The answer she arrived at made her feel nauseous, and so she put the thought aside.

A profound quietness had stolen across the room when the door burst inward so violently, the wooden thing splintered a bit at the hinges. Quelana lept instinctively to her feet and flame graced her fingertips as she spun on the doorway.

Laurentius staggered forth into the room and fell to his knees. His left eye was swollen shut, his lip cracked and busted, and a trickle of blood had stained his mustache below the nose. He raised his hands in the air, and just as Quelana was readying to ask what happened, another man appeared behind the pyromancer.

Her mouth fell agape. "How can this be..."

The knight of Carim, Lautrec, stepped into the room behind the pyromancer, a crossbow held in his arms and angled down at Laurentius' back. The knight's golden armor was gone, replaced with dark leathers, and his face was more heavily bearded then when she'd seen him last on the bridge in the Burg, but it was him; there was no denying it - Lautrec was alive.

Muffled shouts came from Abby beside her, and when Quelana looked, the girl's eyes were wide and filled with an energy she hadn't seen in Abby in a long time.

"Cut her out of there, witch," Lautrec's voice came, just as stern and cold as she remembered it.

Quelana spun back to face him. "How are you alive? You were stabbed and-"

"It's a long story that doesn't matter," Lautrec interrupted. "Now cut the girl loose."

Quelana looked from Lautrec to Laurentius, who avoided her eyes as a look of deep shame stole across his face, and finally to Abby. The girl was twisting her wrists against the chair eagerly, staring at the knight with a hopeful raise of her brow. "What are you going to do with her?" Quelana demanded.

"Not your concern."

"It is my concern!" Quelana snapped. "Listen to me, knight, if you're with Logan, whatever you think he's doing, I-"

"Hold your tongue if you don't want to see the pyromancer with a bolt through his forehead," Lautrec said calmly. "This is the last time I'm going to tell you, witch. Free the girl. Now."

"I'm so sorry, my lady," Laurentius whispered.

Quelana held her eyes on Lautrec's for one, long, pleading moment, but when she found no sympathy there, she sighed and turned to Abby. Abby squinted at her and balled her hands into fists, jerking at the ropes. With no other option, Quelana fell to one knee and began loosening the knots binding her in place. When it was done, Abby rose from the chair so suddenly, she nearly collapsed, taking hold of the bedpost to steady her footing. Her balance regained, she ripped the gag free and stumbled forth to Lautrec. The knight's brow raised as she fell to his chest and wrapped her arms around him.

"Abby, what-"

"I prayed every night for you, Lautrec," Abby said, her voice muffled against his chest. "I prayed to old Gods and new Gods and any Gods who would listen. And now they sent you back to me. I'm not alone anymore. I have you. I have my knight."

Lautrec frowned, fixing the girl with an uncertain look, but did not pry her from his body. He returned his eyes to Quelana, keeping the crossbow fixed on Laurentius between them. "The pyromancer here and I had our... discussion on your whereabouts in private. Do you understand? No one else knows where you are. I don't intend on telling anyone. So if you were wise... you'd flee this castle before it crashes down around you."

"Where are you taking Abby," Quelana demaned.  
"Don't tell her," Abby whimpered into Lautrec's chest. "She's an imposter."

"Should you flee this castle, you might find friends at the Undead Parish," Lautrec went on. "Though you might also find enemies atop Sen's Fortress. That is all the information I'm offering you, witch. Take it as you will. We won't see each other again." He draped one hand around Abby's shoulder to keep her close and began backstepping out of the room.

"Lautrec, stop!" Quelana pleaded. "I... listen to me, I know you're not a... bad man. I perhaps judged you too harshly before. I spoke with Anastacia. I know... well, I know everything."

An anger flashed across the knight's face so quickly, she might have missed it had she blinked.

"You're not a bad man, knight," she went on. "So don't do anything to Abby that would make those words untrue! Do you hear me! Save her!"

But Lautrec had already vanished around the corner.

Laurentius rose to his feet and crossed the room. "My lady, I am so sorry. He took me unawares! I'm not even sure how he knew-"

"Enough," Quelana hissed, shouldering past him to the door. She leaned out just in time to see Lautrec carrying Abby in his arms as if she were his bride and taking the turn at the end of the hall.

"My lady... what are you doing?"

"I'm following him," Quelana explained, pulling her robes tighter to her body.

Laurentius shook his head. "I... would greatly suggest against that. If Logan's guard found you, my lady, I cannot protect you from what they might do."

"That knight just walked out of here with Lordran's future!" Quelana told him. "If harm should befall her, none of this matters! Do you understand that? Now are you coming with me or not?"

Laurentius held her eyes. He shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Craven of a man, she thought, turned, and fled from the room just as the pyromancer was reaching to stop her.

She darted down the length of the hall keeping close to the walls should she need to duck into a doorway to hide herself. She reached the end without interruption, leaned beside it to peak into the next hall, and hurried forward, listening for the man's footsteps. The sound led her to a spiraling staircase. She moved down it, taking the steps in twos, and pressed against the doorway at its bottom. The Great Hall awaited outside. It was mostly abandoned, save for a smattering of men in the corner, talking and drinking, and Lautrec at the far end, carrying Abby out around

a bend. Quelana's eyes flicked from him to the men, saw no path that would no reveal herself, and rushed out anyway.

She could feel their eyes upon her as she sprinted across the hall. One man shouted something, but his words were lost as two others yelled. Chairs scraped the stone flooring, but by then, Quelana had reached the other side and slipped out the passageway. She was in the library. Her eyes caught movement on the second floor balcony. Lautrec had ascended the stairs there and was carrying Abby along its narrow walkway, heading towards a square peg cut into the bookshelves that looked to lead outside. Behind her, the men's voices were nearing. Quelana ran.

She climbed the stairs at the head of the library, rounding up its bend to ascend another flight before halting on the second floor. She glanced over the railing and saw men spilling out of the Great Hall exit she'd just come from. There is no way but forward now, she thought. She dashed down the length of the balcony and rounded the corner.

A harsh, biting, wind greeted her immediately. The passage spilled out to an outer balcony that overlooked the Archive's garden. Quelana lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the winds and snows and marched forward. On the balcony itself, the stone floor was layered in a foot of snowfall, and she could clearly see a man's steps leading forth and down a decline ramp. A massive tower awaited, and Quelana knew at once, though she'd never seen it from that angle, that Lautrec was taking Abby to Logan.

The thought lit a fire beneath her feet. She trudged forth, kicking tufts of snow into the winds as her legs and feet cut trenches in the snow, melting it where her bare skin fell upon it. She reached the end of the ramp, stepped beneath the high arch of an inner sect of the balcony and spotted the footsteps trailing into a doorway. She moved forth to follow and-

-hands grabbed her wrists, spun her, and slammed her back into the wall. She yelped, but her hands were held too close to her own face to ignite her flames. The blade of a dagger pressed into the soft flesh of her throat, and the ugly face of the Knight of Thorns appeared not three inches from her own. "Well, hello, fire bitch," he greeted, his breath as foul as the swamps of Blighttown.

"Let me go!" Quelana hissed, struggling in his grip.

The men who'd been chasing after her from the Great Hall appeared at the top of the ramp.

Kirk raised a hand to halt them. "Pursuit's over, boys," he called to them with a grin. "Your fearless captain of the guard has captured the infamous fire bitch!"

A roar of cheers and laughter rose from the men.

Kirk bowed, taking it in, and set his eyes back on hers. "Now, Logan's orders are to take you to him immediately should you be captured," he said, licking at his lips. "But, well... I think he's probably rather busy with that bastard of a knight who just passed, so... how about you and I have some fun? Remember? Like the fun we wanted to have back in the Burg?" He laughed.

"What should we do, captain?" A man called from the ramp.

"Run along, boys," Kirk told them. He pulled Quelana from the wall, spun her so her back was pressed to his chest, and kept a tight grip on her wrists, holding them beside her own face. "I'm going to take the fire bitch here to the cells. Then I'm going to show her why they really call me the Knight of Thorns."

The man began walking her forward, and Quelana had no choice with her wrists gripped in his own and her back to his chest but to walk with him. She did not doubt that something very terrible was about to befall her, but she could not turn her thoughts from Abby.

You're not a bad man, she had told Lautrec. Prove me right, knight. Please prove me right.

Chapter 29

"Are you taking me to Logan?"

It was the first words she'd uttered in such a long time, Lautrec was startled when she spoke them. The queer and flat way the words played off the prison tower's dark, rounded, walls along with the hoarse sound of Abby's voice didn't help. He looked upon the girl held in his arms, as light as a sack of grain, and nodded. "Yes."

Abby stared at him, the pretty exuberance once held in her blue eyes long gone since Lautrec had last seen her, the cheeks below them gaunt and emaciated. "Okay," she whispered. "If you think it's for the best, my knight."

Logan did not lie, Lautrec thought, lifting his head to avoid the girl's strange, probing, stare. Her mind is failing her.

"We'll have to leave when we're done here," Abby went on. "Quickly. There are terrible things coming. They all call me mad now, but, well, I don't feel mad. Do you think I'm mad, Lautrec?"

"No," he lied. "Just be quiet for a while, Abby."

A cold wind swept up from the base of the tower, sending the blue torches ensconced along its outer rim into a wild dance, casting their blue glow in flickering patterns across the walls. The golems' thunderous footsteps could be heard even from the top of the spiraling staircase that led to them, and as Lautrec walked it, the thumping seemed to synchronize with the pounding of his own heart. He ran his fingers along the smooth silk of Abby's gown and steadied his breath. Calm yourself, he thought. You'll need your wits more than ever in the coming moments.

As they neared the bottom, passing rows of barred cells that stunk of old wood and lost time, Abby began fidgeting in his arms. "Stop that," he told her calmly.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm afraid."

He looked upon her again. The girl had taken handfuls of her gown near her chest and balled fists around them. Her eyes had grown wide and her breathing sporadic. "There's nothing to be afraid of," he told her. Then why are you afraid? An inner voice questioned.

"Where will we go after this?" Abby asked, resting her head against his chest.

"I don't know."  
"But you'll protect me..."

Lautrec sighed. "I... suppose."

Abby was quiet for a moment, then her hands reached out and cupped his face. "I can be your wife."

He craned his neck back to free himself from her hold, frowning. "Abby just... just be quiet for now, alright?"

"I still have my maidenhood," she went on anyway. "Chester wanted it, but... he was a demon just like the rest of them. You can have me, though, Lautrec. I can give you children. You can take me to Carim and I'll give you children and I'll never bother you and I'll cook your meals and-"

"Please," he snapped, shaking her in his arms a bit harder than he'd intended to.

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I'll do as you say like a good wife should. If you want me to be quiet, I'll never speak again. I'll obey you and love you and raise your children and I swear I won't bother you, just... just please don't let them take me. Please, Lautrec. I thought I was brave enough... to maybe... go to them. But I'm not brave like you, my knight. I'm not. And now they're threatening to come. Don't let them take me."

"Let who take you?"

"All of them," she whispered, swiping tears from the corners of her eyes. "The demons and the hollows and the knights and the fat one. Yes. And the tall one. And the one who isn't sure if he's a she or if she's a he. I don't want to go with them. Please don't let them take me."

She is truly lost, he thought, holding her eyes as they grew rheumy above the dark circles beneath. I will give her the peace of death, Logan had told him. Lautrec hadn't truly understood the phrase until just then, staring into the eyes of a shattered mind. "No one's taking you anywhere, alright? Can you please be quiet now?"

She was trembling in his arms, but she pressed her lips together and nodded and spoke no more for the rest of the descent.

The golems were the first thing to greet them upon arrival. The hulking blue monstrosities lumbered forth from the massive tower of machinery in the room's center, crowding around Lautrec as Abby pressed her face into his chest to hide herself. He looked from one to the next, the blank and featureless heads atop their tree trunk necks seeming to stare directly into him.

"Bring her here, Lautrec," Logan's deep voice boomed from beside the machine, and Lautrec noted it was the only thing in the tower that seemed to catch off the walls, echoing the words back and forth in a haunting way.

He squeezed Abby a bit tighter to his body and turned sideways to slip between two golems, holding a baleful glare upon them as he went. Logan was waiting beside his mad machine, his long, crimson, robe spilling to the floor and pooling around him, his massive hat brim wobbling as he nodded his head.

"A man who can get things done," he greeted, spreading his arms wide as Lautrec neared. "I chose you for a reason and that reason is more apparent now than ever before. Well done, knight. Well done. Hello, Abby. Dear? Are you crying?"

Abby sniffled and shook her head. "No, Logan."

"Well, good! You shouldn't be! The courageous knight whose arms you rest in and myself have gone to great measures to ensure you safely away from those wretched cultists." Logan stepped forward to look upon Abby. Lautrec saw the man's face looked somehow older than it had not two hours earlier when they'd spoken. The wrinkles had grown more pronounced, the skin sagged just a bit looser, and even the man's hair seemed to wither and gray in the brief time. His bushy eyebrows were peaked sympathetically as he fixed Abby with a smile. "You're in a great deal of suffering now, aren't you Abby?"

"...can't sleep..." she quietly responded.  
"Demons in your dreams?"  
She nodded.  
He returned the gesture. "You want the pain to be over, don't you?" She nodded.

His smile widened. "Then over it shall be, dear." He lifted his eyes to Lautrec. "Bring her here."

Logan crossed to his machine and Lautrec followed, glancing back to see the nine golems standing sentinel at the base of the staircase. The sorcerer had set a table up at the front of the towering stack of cogs and piping, and as he moved around it, his hand patted its top. "Set her down."

Lautrec moved to the other side of the table and began to lean forward to release Abby, but the her arms wrapped around his neck and she pulled herself tight to his chest. "What are you doing, girl?"

Her lips came so close to his ear, he could feel the warmth of her breath. "I don't trust him," she whispered, her voice trembling as violently as her body.

"Let go of me, Abby," he told her, taking hold of her arms and prying them loose.

She released him and allowed herself to be lowered to the table. Lautrec looked down at her, lying there in robes that draped loosely over a frame that had grown unhealthily thin, and a face that had once been pretty and alive and now was stressed with lines of paranoia and fear and illness and he wonder what had happened. Where had it all gone wrong.

There will be blood spilled here, he thought, recalling the distant echo of a long lost voice. He lifted his head to stare at Logan. "Has this ever happened before?"

Logan moved down the length of the table to stand beside Abby's head. He ran his slender fingers through what little hair she had and smiled disarmingly at her. "Has what happened, Lautrec?"

"If the world moves in cycles," Lautrec said. "Have we ever made it this far in a previous 'cycle'? Have you ever had Abby lying here on this table before?"

"The world cycles. The Chosen is never the same," Logan explained. His hand moved from Abby's hair to her cheek, stroking it gently as Abby lip quivered and a tear rolled her cheek to pool at the table beneath her. "So, no. This has never happened before."

"What about with another Chosen? This all feels... very familiar," Lautrec pressed on. His skin suddenly felt very warm, as if taken by a fever, and his breath tasted foreign upon his tongue.

"We have tried more than once," Logan admitted, nodding. His hand moved from Abby's cheek to her eyes, cupping over them to blind her. Abby whimpered and he shushed her. "No, dear. The suffering is almost over now." He waited for her to quiet before continuing in a wistful, quiet, voice. "You would have made a lovely Queen had things gone... better."

There will be blood spilled here. Lautrec looked back to the golems. They hadn't moved. Their hulking bodies swayed a bit as they stood, but they were otherwise as still as stone. They were watching.

Lautrec's attention was pulled back to the table by the schk of a dagger coming unsheathed. He turned and saw Logan had a blade pressed to Abby's throat. "Just... wait," Lautrec said. His head had grown light and his vision dimmed. "Are you sure there is no other way?"

"Other way?" Logan questioned. "Lautrec, we went over this. What else is there to be done, my friend? The girl will have her peace, and the machine will offer salvation." He glanced over his shoulder at the wooden and steel monstrosity behind him. "And should our Creators still be watching over us. If, perhaps, they haven't all abandoned us to the cruel Gods who toy with our lives... then we will show them our ambition to change." He returned his gaze to Abby, her eyes still shielded beneath his hand. He trickled the blade beneath her chin. "We will show them we are

willing to live in a world free of Gods and rules and... Chosen. Here! Now! Before the machine! Let the Creators see our desires!"

Abby's hands were trembling so violently, her knuckles were rattling against the table. She opened her mouth and jagged breath came out. "...b- bonfire..."

"Oh, don't worry, Abby," Logan cooed, running the thumb of his hand over her cheek. "I've had that bonfire dismantled. You won't return to suffer. You will close your eyes and you will finally have your rest."

"...rest...?" She croaked.

"And you," Logan went on, raising his eyes to Lautrec. "Have a reward coming, I believe. Yes. In fact, we'll go see our lovely little firekeeper right after this. Would you like that, Lautrec?"

Laughing, Crying, Begging, the charred corpses of a man and wife. "Yes," Lautrec answered, putting aside the thought of Anastacia lest it drive his as mad as Abby.

"Yes," Logan said. "Then that is just what we shall do."

There will be blood spilled here.

Logan took a breath, looking upon Abby with an almost sympathetic expression upon his wrinkled face. "Such a shame." He looked to the top of the tower. "Are you watching you cruel Gods? Here lies your play thing! Can you see the pain you cause her!? The pain you cause all of us! NO MORE!"

His shout bounced up into the very top of the tower, carrying ghostly trails of his words for a long time. Lautrec glanced back at the golems: still there; still watching.

You're not a bad man, Quelana spoke in his head. "I'm not a bad man," he agreed.

"What's that?" Logan questioned, and when Lautrec didn't answer, his smile widened. "Lautrec... don't let this weigh on your conscious. A bad man? Bad? Look at this world we live in. Good and bad... those are words of the simple and weak. Men like you and I... we are shades of grey, just as the rest of the world. When we were boys, we imagined sorcerers and warriors and knights that were 'good' and pure and true and noble and honest... and when we grew up, we looked at the men beneath their helmets and their caps and what did we find? That the armor was a lie. A shiny, pretty, lie, and we all bought into it when in truth? The lie hid the dirty faces of murders and rapists and thieves. That is what our heroes were. Not men of black or white, but men of grey And when everyone is grey, what is there to separate us? Our ambition."

Lautrec's fingers itched madly. He brought his hands together to scratch them.

"Good is a word for the unambitious so that when they look upon men with more than they have, they can lie to themselves and say that they had at least lived 'good' lives." Logan sneered. "How long has this lie hindered our progress? How many lives have been wasted lying in the shackles of 'right and wrong'? There is only ambition, Lautrec, and you and I? We have it. We are men who get things done. Let them paint us as their villains. They only truly wish they had the courage or the bravery or the determination to be just as villainous. They don't, however. And so... the lie goes on."

There will be blood spilled here.

Logan lowered his face to Abby's and kissed her quivering lips. "Good night my Queen." He pressed the dagger to her throat.

"Logan," Lautrec said, halting him. When Logan lifted his head, Lautrec stuck his hand across the table.

Logan eyed it as a smile crept up his face. "You told me you only shake the hands of men you respect. Isn't that right?"

"Yes," he said.

Logan nodded, rising from Abby. "I told you," he said with a soft laugh. "You and I will be great friends in the coming change, knight. Oh yes." The sorcerer reached across the table and took Lautrec's hand in his own. He smiled and-

-Lautrec yanked him forward, reached for his shotel, and drove the curved blade into the side of the man's throat. It hooked into the soft flesh and Lautrec ripped. Logan's throat exploded in a geyser of blood as his mouth dropped open and his eyes bloomed as wide and white as freshly sprung orchids. A choked gurgle escaped his gaping mouth as his hands came up to his throat, as if to cradle the blood spilling from within and stop it from leaving him. He clawed at his cheeks instead, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he slumped forth onto the table then rolled off and landed dead on the floor with a muted thump.

Abby was sitting up on her elbows, staring at Logan's corpse, a look of stunned incredulity on her face.

"Don't look at him. Close your eyes," Lautrec commanded of her, which she did immediately and without question, and he bent and scooped her back into his arms.

He spun to face the golems. They were still standing at the base of the stairs, still and quiet and watching from heads with no eyes. Lautrec held just as still, watching them for attack, listening as his heart thundered in

his chest. When they did not come, he swallowed and stepped forward. Logan commanded them, he assured himself. Logan's dead. So are they. He pulled Abby tight to his chest and stepped before the creatures.

"What's happening," Abby whispered, here eyes still clenched tightly shut.

Lautrec ignored her, turning sideways to move between the first two golems, his eyes holding on their burly upper bodies and arms that could reach out and crush both Abby and himself into nothing. He angled the girl in his arms so her legs and feet did not touch the things, ducked beneath a thick arm hanging in his path like a down tree, and sidestepped the two nearest to the stairs.

When his feet fell to the first step, the breath he hadn't been aware he was holding burst from his chest. He stole a quick glance at the things to make sure they weren't giving pursuit. They weren't. He began to run.

"Why are you running?" Abby asked, her voice thick with trepidation. "Can I open my eyes?"

"Yes," he told her. "And I don't know why I'm running." Because this is mad. This whole thing is mad and now your mind is as lost as the girl's. The two of you-

"I can walk," she told him, interrupting his thoughts.

He didn't release her, though he couldn't be sure if it was for her sake or his own.

"You killed him," Abby said when he didn't respond. "You killed Logan." "Yes."  
"...to protect me?"

"I... I'm not sure," Lautrec admitted. "You said you didn't trust him. In the moment, neither did I. I'm a knight. We learn to trust our instincts or we learn to die."

His wind was leaving him, and so Lautrec slowed to a halt, resting against the staircases outer barrier. He looked down up the golems. They hadn't moved. That was a good thing. Abby leaned forward and kissed his cheek. He pulled his head away. "Abby, stop it."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I knew you would protect me, though, I just knew it. I prayed to the Gods to send you back to me and they did." She smiled, and the prettiness of the expression nearly vanquished the gauntness of her cheeks and the dark circles beneath her eyes. "Are we leaving now?"

"No," he told her and began climbing the stairs again at a slower pace. "I

can't leave without dealing with Anastacia."

Abby stared up at him. "That's why you won't take me as your wife, isn't it? You love her. I understand."

"She's my sister," he told her, and the words felt so strange coming from his tongue, the voice they belonged to hardly sounded like his own. He frowned down at Abby, wondering why he'd told her that. He'd never told anyone that.

"Sister?" Abby echoed. Her eyes studied his face, as if checking for verisimilitude. A smile crept upon her lips. "Yes, of course. You look so alike." Her look darkened. "You're going to kill her too, aren't you. Like Logan?"

"Yes."  
"...is she bad like him?" "Very bad."

"...then I understand," Abby said after a silence. "I trust you. You're the only one I can now. You saved me. You're my knight... and I would hope, someday, my husband."

thump - thump - thump

Lautrec shared a look of dread with Abby. He moved to the barrier and peered down to the tower's bottom. The golems were moving again, coming up the steps behind the two of them.

And Logan's body was missing.  
"That's impossible," Lautrec muttered.

"I don't want to be in here anymore," Abby said, wrapping her arms around his neck.

He broke into a run again as the thumping of the golems footsteps trailed behind them. They reached the ladder leading to the Archive's balcony. Abby offered to climb it herself, but Lautrec wasn't ready to release her. He moved her to his shoulder, took the rungs in his hands, and climbed. It was not easy, and twice he had to halt to steady them and catch his breath, but soon enough they reached the top.

Lautrec shifted Abby's weight back down between his arms and was readying to carry her out onto the balcony when the blank, wide-eyed, stare on the girl's face held his feet in place. "Gods, What now?"

"Oh no," Abby whispered. "No, no, no. Please." "Abby, what!?" He shouted, shaking her.

Her eyes drifted to his. "We're too late... I'm sorry. I tried." She hugged him, her tearful face disappearing over his shoulder. "They felt the danger I was in before... they're very angry. They started coming. I can't stop them anymore."

"...angry? How-"

She sniffled. "I'm so sorry. They're coming."

"Abby, who is-"

Aaawwooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

His words were lost in the shrill blare of a war horn wailing from somewhere higher in the castle.

Aaawwoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Abby tightened her squeeze. "I'm sorry."

Lautrec opened his mouth to ask her what exactly was happening, but the words never needed to be spoken. The men's shouts answered the question for him.

"Man the wall!" A voice screamed deeper in the castle ahead. "Man the wall! The hollows are marching! The hollows are marching! Man the wall!"

"The hollows march from Anor Londo!" 


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 30

A old man with no teeth left in his mouth and a great, gaping, pit where his left eye should have been rushed to the front of his cell and wrapped his dirty hands around the bars when he saw her approaching. The man's tongue darted out and licked at his dry, cracking, lips. "Brought me a present today, oh sweet knight? Something to help an old prisoner like me... pass the time perhaps?" He cackled, but the sound turned into a fit of coughs.

Kirk squeezed Quelana's wrists together a bit tighter and pulled her from the old man's grasping arms. "Piss off, old man," he hissed. "The witch is mine."

"Witch?" The man's eyes fell to hers and narrowed. His dirty face twisted into a grimace. "Why didn't you say so? Get that thing away from me!"

The Knight of Thorns did just that. He kept her pinned close to his body as he marched her deeper into the Archive's prison. The place was dim, damp, and foul smelling, but it was world's away from Logan's secret dungeon at the base of his tower, and Quelana was, at least, thankful for that. Cells lined the walls, their bars rusted, their stone floors filthy and littered with buckets of waste and the bones of rats and mice. They passed another old man rotting away in a cell and Quelana wondered what their crime had been, if there had been a crime at all. The man lifted his head as they passed, watching and scratching at his groin. The next cell housed a woman, just as old as the first two, her hair greyed and falling from her head in loose, frizzy, tufts. She was smiling madly and cradling her knees to rock back and forth on the floor of her prison. If she noticed them, she made no indication she had. Two cells deeper, a younger man in chainmail armor was resting with his head to the wall, his arms folded across his chest, and a look upon his face that Quelana could only think of as crestfallen.

The last two cells, separated by the narrow gap of the walkway between them, housed Tarkus to her left, and a beaten, battered, shell of a man lying to her right that, upon further inspection, she saw was the Knight Solaire. His face was swollen, dried blood caked his nose and lip, and his eyes were shut. That poor man, Quelana thought. All around me, the good suffer and the wicked triumph. What cruel Gods watch over us?

Tarkus rose beside her, and the sight of the giant man lifting in her periphery pulled her attention back to him. He walked to the front of his cell and wrapped his hands around the bars like the old man had in the first cell, and Quelana was relieved to see ten, meaty, fingers protruding from the knuckles; she had heard from Laurentius that Kirk and his men were threatening to cut them off.

"What are you doing with her, craven?" Tarkus questioned. "You're not

thinking of beating on a woman now are you? Surely not even you are so vile?"

Kirk unsheathed his barbed sword and threw a jab at Tarkus. The mammoth of a man had to duck back from the bars to avoid being skewered. "This is no woman, you ape. This is a witch. And I'm not beating her... no, we're going to have much more fun than that." He laughed.

Tarkus' look darkened. "You coward. Open my cell and face me - you with your pathetic little sword and me with my bare hands. I'd still break your bones."

Kirk chortled, but otherwise ignored the threat. He forced Quelana back to the wall at the end of the cells, spun her, and shoved her into it. Her hands came briefly free, but the knight was quick to snatch them back up and pin them up over her head. Flames lashed from her fingertips to scratch at the ceiling. Kirk's eyes lifted there and the man grinned. "Oh you know just how to heat me up, witch."

"May your soul rot in Izalith when death finally comes for you," Quelana said, struggling in his grip.

Kirk stared at her, his eyes flicked across the features of her face and his breath growing more labored. "You know, when I saw you on the bridge in the Burg that day I just knew it was our destiny to be together." Quelana lifted her knee to his groin, but the knight shifted to block the blow and grabbed her violently by the chin, steadying her head so her eyes met his own. "Yeah, that's right. Fight me. I prefer it like that." She tried, but he was far stronger, and without her flames, she was useless. "Tell me," he began after she'd settled down, "Whatever hell you and your mother and your sisters climbed out of... you look a whole lot like us humans." His grin widened. "So my question is: just how human are you?"

His foot landed between her own and kicked at her ankle, forcing her legs to spread a bit wider. Kirk licked at his lips, released her chin, and grabbed his sword. He lifted it to her cheek and set the barbed blade gently against her flesh there.

"You son of a bitch..." Tarkus growled from his cell.

Kirk ignored him. He dragged the sword ever so slightly along Quelana's cheek, and she winced as the barbs tore at her skin. Don't scream, she pleaded. Don't give this creature the satisfaction. The sword came away from her cheek, disappeared below her chest, and she felt it press against her inner thigh. "Are you truly all-woman?" Kirk asked. The playfulness of his voice was all but gone then, only a heavy, lusty, tone remaining. The sword lifted higher between her legs, lifting her robes up as it rose. "I'm going to put a child in you," Kirk told her. "And we'll see if it comes out with horns... or perhaps barbs!" His grip tightened on her hands and he reached to his waist and-

-the knight's posture stiffened, his mouth fell agape, and he trembled sporadically as a queer yellow light flickered around his body. "ARK-!" Kirk screeched from clenched teeth. His eyes rolled back into his head as the yellow light-Lightning, Quelana thought, It's lightning-wrapped around his torso, his arms, his neck, and finally his hideous face. His grip faltered around her wrists, and the man collapsed to his knees before her. His eyes fell on her briefly, wide and scared and confused, then he slumped over on his side to the floor; unconscious or dead, Quelana could not tell.

Kirk cleared from her vision, Quelana saw the Knight Solaire standing tall in his cell, his arm raised high above him, the electric residue of the lightning still cackling and biting at the air around it. "Praise the son you vile beast," he said quietly, fixing Kirk's body with a stoic look. "And let it never shine on you again."

Tarkus was staring at the knight, his eyes just as wide and incredulous as Quelana's. "Solaire... how did you... you don't even have a talisman!"

The lightning finally subsiding around his arm, the knight lowered it and looked between the two of them. "I... I'm not sure. It is something I have always been capable of."

"There was only one man in Lordran who could do what you just did," Quelana said. "Nearly all of my pupils spoke of him at one time or another. The Keeper of the Kiln. Lord of Sunlight. Lord of Cinder. Gwyn."

A quiet moment passed between the three of them as they exchanged uncertain looks. It was Tarkus who broke the silence. "The key! The bastard was captain of the guard, he must have a key on him! Hurry, Quelana, before his bastard friends arrive."

Quelana nodded, fell to her knees, and dug into the man's pockets. Her eyes kept a wary watch on his own for signs of life, but none came. She found a ring of keys hooked to his belt beneath his belly, unlatched them, and rushed to the cell door. As she began trying at different keys to free Tarkus, she said, "A knight I rode with, Lautrec is his name, came here. He took Abby to Logan. I have to go to them." She found the right key and the door popped open.

Tarkus had to duck his head beneath the barred passage. He stretched his arms and smiled. "The only thing that would feel better right now is a greatsword in my hand. I'll need to retrieve that sooner rather than later."

Quelana crossed the hall and opened Solaire's cell. He stepped free and bowed graciously. "Thank you, my lady."

"Repay me and help me save Abby," Quelana said. "The missing children are down there in the prison tower as well." She looked between Tarkus and Solaire. "The three of us can go down there together. We can kill

Logan, save the children, and rescue Abby."

Solaire frowned. "Kill Logan? My lady, that is-"

"Open your bloody eyes, Solaire," Tarkus interjected. "The sorcerer is a madman. I know he saved your life when the first Chosen still roamed Lordran, but-"

"-but he is insane with power and he keeps children and beasts and a crossbreed locked away in his dungeon," Quelana finished for the big man. "Solaire, come with us and I can show it to you. You don't have to act against Logan until you see with your own eyes what horrors he keeps."

Solaire's eyes were darting between the two of them, looking desperate for some answer to their accusations. When he, apparently, came up with none, his shoulders slumped and he gave a defeated nod of his head. "...alright. I will go with you. But we must hear both sides of the story! We- "

Aawwoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The blaring of a distant horn came so shrill and loud and unexpected, Quelana felt flames rise in her palm as her heart skipped a beat. Both Solaire and Tarkus stiffened and held each other's gaze.

"If it comes twice-" Tarkus began, but whatever he was going to say was lost.

Aawwoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo "Gods help us," the man muttered.

"What is that?" Quelana snapped. Her stomach was lurching, threatening to overturn.

"The hollows are marching," Solaire answered quietly, staring over her shoulder into nothing. "Praise the Sun, the hollows are coming." Purpose filled his eyes, shaking free the vacant look. "I have to go. They need leadership."

"Abby wasn't mad then!?" Quelana spoke, louder than she'd intended, and grabbed at his arm.

"Let him go, Quelana," Tarkus told her softly. "This castle needs him more than you."

With a moment's hesitation, she released Solaire. He bowed, snatched Kirk's barbed sword from the ground at his feet, and turned to sprint from the cells. Quelana turned her eyes on Tarkus. "What do we do then? Abby is in danger! I can't abandon her!"

Tarkus scratched at his lightly bearded chin. "Find Rhea. She's been

studying up on what sort of spell the children might be under. Supposed to have worked up some miracle to fix them. Rickert won't be far from her. The three of you go and do what you can. I can't come, witch, I'm sorry. I need to find my sword and then I need to smash a whole lot of hollows. If the castle falls... we all fall."

Quelana nodded. "Okay. Where is the priestess?"

Tarkus thought. "Perhaps on the wall. We've been having her and Rickert spy on the soldier's training. I will-"

"Hey!"

The shout pulled both their eyes to the far end of the hall. Petrus was standing there, thick in his heavy armor, a morning star clutched menacingly in his hands. The man marched forth, lifting his shield, and spotted Kirk lying at the rear of the prison. "You bastards!" He growled.

Tarkus wore no shirt or shoes, held no weapon nor shield, but he screamed a warcry that carried none of those concerns, lowered his shoulder, and charged the man. Petrus' eyes widened, and he stood frozen to the spot nonplussed. Tarkus' shoulder drove into the man's shield, splintering it at the corner, and Tarkus' meaty hands grabbed for the morning star, pried it loose, and drove the hilt of the thing down into Petrus' temple. The heavy-set man collapsed unconscious.

Tarkus drove a fist into his own chest and roared. "Aye! Many hollow will die today by these hands! Quelana... until we meet again. Good luck." He climbed over Petrus and disappeared around a bend in the hall.

Find Rhea, she thought, turned back once more to ensure Kirk had not risen like some demon clawing up from Izalith itself, and sprinted from the prison.

The library was chaos. A wave of frenetic shouting greeted her as she rushed to the balcony and peered over its banister. Men, women, even children were rushing from place to place, carrying buckets of water and crates of food, likely preparing to hold up in some inner keep of the castle should the main gate fall. Young men were spilling out of the hall near the barracks, pulling boots to their feet and helms to their heads. One man wielding a short sword came rushing down the length of the balcony, but when Quelana spun and ignited her pyromancy in defense, he only fixed her with a frown and sidled past her. "Move aside, witch!" He snapped, passed, and hurried off.

I'm the least of their concerns now, she realized, quelling the flame. That was a good thing; it meant she could move about unhindered. Quelana stole one last glance to the lower level of the library, where a trio of archers were strapping quivers to each others backs, and took off down the length of the balcony to find Rhea.

The guard tower was nestled into the corner of the castle near the front, and Quelana took the steps in twos as she bounded upwards. She nearly collided with two crossbowmen who were making the climb as well, but more slowly as they were encumbered with leathers and she only in her robes. Quelana slipped between them, and neither bothered to so much as say a word to her when she did so.

Sunlight and snow and coldness greeted her upon spilling out of the guard tower to the upper wall. A dozen archers were lined at the parapets, staring down upon Anor Londo in silence. Rhea was at the far end of them, watching herself, a look of fear wrinkling her comely face. Quelana sent a lick of flame to clear the snows from her path, and darted forth to the priestess.

"Rhea," she called. "Come with me! The time to act is now! We must take advantage of this chaos and-"

Rhea was still staring forward, as if she hadn't heard a word Quelana said.

"Rhea?" Quelana questioned, stepping beside the woman and tugging at her arm.

"Hm?" Rhea answered, but did not pry her eyes away.

Quelana traced their gaze to the city and her mouth fell agape. "Mother Izalith..." she muttered upon seeing what awaited within.

The last time she'd glimpsed the city, there had been dozens of hollows swarming about, bearing torches and spears and swords. They had looked unpleasant, certainly, but nothing too great for the castle to handle. That was no longer true. Now hundreds were clustered together so tightly, their heads moving about gave the impression that the streets themselves had come aliveand were shifting and swaying and moving forth in a relentless stream of death. Hollows were pouring from the opened doorways of the city streets, filtering out of the shattered windows of the churches, clambering up from the bridges and walkways, erupting from within the big doors of the Great Chapel. Further down along the bridge leading to the upper wall, four hollows had collared and leashed a massive boar, the things head adorned with a steel helm; matching plating draping from its sides. Winged demons, pale and fanged, were screeching and batting their veiny wings as they soared overhead, jabbing at the hollows who fell out of line with the sharpened tips of long, white, spears. She spotted hollows with crossbows dashing down a ramp to work themselves into the horde. Another cluster wielding torches and daggers burst free from the horde to melt away snow in the path. At the tail end of the river of dead, tall knights adorned in shiny, silver, armor stood tall and stoic and as still as stone. Some carried swords and lances, but the most menacing-looking of the lot were the two in the back with giant greatbows that stood end-to-end as tall as the knights themselves.

"This is no small force..." Quelana whispered. "This is an army. The men and women of this castle can't possibly hold all of that back!"

"No," Rhea agreed quietly beside her. "We can't."

"We have to leave," Quelana said, unable to pry her eyes from the mass of death marching upon them from the city below. "Come on."

"What?" Rhea asked, finally pulling herself from her daze. "What do you mean?"

"We're going to free the children and rescue Abby. Then we're going to flee this cursed castle."

"There's nowhere to go now," said Rhea.

Quelana would not let herself dwell on the hopelessness of Rhea's words. She cleared the thought from her head, took the priestess by the elbow, and pulled her away from the parapets. "Rickert!" Rhea called down further along the wall. "Come on! It's time to go!"

Rickert, who'd been standing on the other end of the archers, turned his gaze from the city to the two of them, and Quelana saw the usual lighthearted look of his face was missing, only a deep expression of trepidation lining it instead. "We're going to die," he muttered.

"Come on!" Rhea pleaded as Quelana kept her moving.

After one last terrified look out into the city, he came.

The chaotic sounds of the castle greeted them at the bottom of the guard tower, and now a new sound had joined the fray. The deep and rhythmic thumping that Quelana had first heard at the base of Logan's tower was approaching, trailing after a chorus of frightened screams and shouts. As the three of them moved onto the library balcony, a woman came rushing past them, shifted her feet to avoid collision, and wound up spilling to the floor on her hands and knees. Rickert moved to help her up, but the woman swatted his hand away, scurried to her feet, and sprinted off without so much as saying a word.

"Quite rude, that one," Rickert said, watching her go.

thump - thump - thump

Rickert turned first, and his expression was enough to let Quelana know something very bad was coming there way. She spun to face it. Further down the balcony, the massive figure of a crystal golem came lumbering around the bend, its pegged feet driving deep cracks into the wooden floor as it marched forth. Its shoulders dragged against the bookshelf at its side, ripping the books there free, sending their papers flying about in a frenzy.

"Logan has sent his golems to protect the castle," Rhea said hopefully.

"I don't think so, Ray," Rickert said, taking the priestess by the hand and tugging her in the opposite direction.

A man knelt in the golem's path, his head lowered in concentration as he stuffed a quiver full with loose arrows. The golem stomped forth, but by the time the man looked up at the noise it was too late. The creature wrenched back one of its tree trunk arms and buried the thing in the man's side. Quelana could hear bones crack as the force lifted the man from his feet and sent him barreling right through the wooden banister of the balcony, shattering the thing into bits upon impact. He plummeted to the library below, landing with a resounding thud against the stone floor.

The golem marched forth.

"Come on!" Rickert shouted, pulling Quelana's gaze from the thing and reminding her feet to start moving.

They ran beneath a short tunnel connecting the two halves of the library. In the next room, a wooden lift was packed to the edges with men and women fleeing to the lower levels. Rickert halted them, spun, and dashed to the gate just as the woman who'd tripped before them earlier was slamming it shut.

"Get away!" She hissed. "It's full!"

Rickert ignored her, pried her hands loose, and slid the gate back, turning to gesture Rhea and Quelana forward. Rhea sidled past the woman, who shot her a baleful glare, but when Quelana neared, the woman shrieked. "It's the witch!" The other men and women turned their already-fearful eyes her way and some began to shout their protests.

"That thing ain't comin' on here!" "Get it away!"  
"She'll burn us all into our graves!" "Witch!"

One man, short and blond-haired, pulled a sword free from his sheath and raised it menacingly in her direction. "Stay where you are!"

"What's the matter with you all!" Rhea pleaded, trying to clear some room aboard the lift. "She is not your enemy! It is Logan who has unleashed his golems upon you and it is the hollow who come to take your lives!"

"A panicked man hears only his own panic," Rickert told the priestess, then faced Quelana. "Show 'em some flame. That'll clear some room."

thump - thump - thump

Quelana raised her hand, letting her robe fall from her wrists, and commanded a spray of fire into the air. The men and women on the lift gasped and shrieked and clutched to their chest, but Rickert was right: they moved back. Quelana stepped onto the platform and Rhea slid the gate shut. The lever was pulled and the lift jerked into a slow descent to the next level.

Halfway down, the banister and corner pillar of the balcony above exploded, sending chunks of polished wood sailing through the air to the lower level. The people aboard the platform screamed again, and Quelana lifted her head to see the crystal golem towering above them, watching from the spot they'd stood no ten seconds earlier. Its head cocked sideways and its knees bent.

"It's going to dive on us," Quelana said. "Get off the platform." "What?" Rhea spat.  
"Get off the platform NOW!" Quelana shouted.  
"We ain't at the bottom yet!" A man shouted back.

A strong flame doe not waver. Quelana brought her hands together at the wrists, raised them above her head, and angled her palms at the floor of the balcony. It was far, but she'd hit further. The golem moved forward and she commanded a pillar of fire to surge from her hands. It's flames snapped at the air as it twirled forward and baked the floor of the balcony, the heat blackening and warping the wood almost instantly. The golem lifted a hand to shield itself from the attack, thinking it was directed at the creature itself, and as it stood in defense, the ground around it gave way. The boards splintered with a final, defeated, crack, and the golem plummeted through the floor, trailing right past the lift beside them, and slammed the ground beneath with such force, a shallow crater of stone pooled around its body. The creature did not rise.

"Father Eternal..." Rhea muttered, leaning over the railing.

"Good show, witch," Rickert said, grinning. He turned to the crowd. "You see? Fire witch good. Golems bad. Understand yet?"

Their eyes fell to Quelana, the anger mostly replaced by a childlike awe, but none of them spoke.

The lift came to a halt at the lower level, and everyone rushed eagerly from the gates the moment they slid away. "We have to go back," Quelana insisted. "Is there another way to Logan's tower?"

"There are ways," Rhea said. "None of them exactly easy." "It doesn't matter. We-"

"Scouting party!" A shout interrupted. The crowd turned to the second floor balcony, where a young man in loose fitting iron armor came tumbling around the corner, his helm spilling from his head as he grasped the rail to steady himself. He stare down upon them, wide-eyed and frantic. "There's a scouting party of hollows! Snuck up ahead 'fore the archers could loose their arrows! They're likely within the lower common hall and-"

The lift leading to the common hall at the end of the room came to life, whirring and humming as it rose.

"Too late..." the boy muttered, swiping at his sweaty brow. "Take up arms! TAKE UP ARMS!"

A wash of panic swept the crowd again, sending people running back for the lift, others scrambling forth with weapons clutched dearly in their shaking hands, other still lowering to their knees and praying to whatever Gods they prayed to. Rickert wrestled a catalyst free from his belt and stepped forward, Rhea at his side, her talisman in hand. The man who'd drawn his blade on Quelana earlier stepped beside them, fixing the coming lift with a frightened stare. Two young men and an older woman joined the trio, and Quelana saw one of the men carried only a chunk of wood that had come free from the golem's attack.

The lift neared, and now the stench of the hollow stung the air, putrid and necrotic; the sounds of their grunts and groans trailing after the smell.

"Are we going to d-die?" One of the young men asked.

"Someday," Rickert answered. "Hopefully not this day, though."

The man clutching the chunk of wood's knees began to wobble. He looked anxiously from the lift to the five people gathered around him, back to the lift, and finally threw the wood to the ground. "Piss on this!" He cried out and scrambled back towards the lift.

"A mighty brave lad, that one," Rickert said dryly. "Clear out of the way," Quelana said.

Rickert, Rhea, and their three defenders turned towards her. "What?" Rhea questioned.

"Clear out. Now."

Rickert held her eyes for a moment, understanding down on his face. He nodded. "Yeah... okay. Come on, Ray. The rest of you move!"

When the front of the lift was clear, Quelana stepped forth and raised her arm. She pulled a deep breath, ignoring the hollow's stench, and focused on her hand. She curled her fingers, as if clutching a small stone, and

commanded the flames to swirl there. It started as only a spinning pebble of red and orange, but as she focused, the pebble swelled and grew and lashed at the air, the colors inside burning from a soft orange to a searing, scorching, crimson.

The crowd gathered at her sides began backing away from her. Even Rickert backed away, wrapping his hand around Rhea protectively as his eyes held transfixed on the swirl of fire.

The spell grew and grew as the lift came near, and by the time the heads of the disgusting, hollowed, soldiers rose over the floor's edge, Quelana had formed a massive Chaos Fireball. She chucked it forth before the lift had a chance to halt. There were just under two dozen hollows packed in to the elevator, swords and spears and shields, clutched in their decaying fingers. Their mouths gaped open upon spotting her, hissing some otherworldly sound. The lift halted, the gates opened, and the hollows bunched together. They glowed red beneath the belly of death awaiting them. Their heads lifted to the spell, but by then it was far, far too late. The flame washed over them in a sea of fire, sending the tattered rags they wore ablaze and provoking shrill screams from their toothless mouths. When the fire fell to their feet, it bubbled into a lava upon the platform, decaying the wood in seconds and leaving the hollows who hadn't yet been burned to death to plummet back down the long fall to where they had come from.

When it was done, only Quelana and the scent of burning cloth remained.

Rickert stepped slowly to the empty lift, peered down it, and laughed. "Well... suppose we won't have to worry about anymore coming up that way."

"That was incredible," Rhea said, smiling at her and laying an appreciative hand on her shoulder.

The rest of the crowd inched forth from their various hiding spots. They gathered around Quelana, watching her as if she might burst into flames herself at any moment.

"Logan be damned," one man said. "I'll follow the witch!" "Aye," another agreed.  
"What do we do, witch?" A woman asked. "Where do we go?" "Take us with you," another added.

"Aye, take us with you."

They pressed in tighter on her, and Quelana raised a hand to halt them. "Stop. Go find the Knight Solaire and he will find use for you. I am not a leader."

"Solaire? He ain't in command no more. Kirk got the command of the castle now."

"Not anymore," Quelana corrected the man. "You will take your order from Solaire and no one else. Not even Logan." She moved her eyes from person to person, letting her look linger just long enough on each of them to instil some fear. "You saw what I'm capable of. If you are with Logan... you are my enemy. And Solaire's enemy. Understood?"

A smattering of agreement made its way through the crowd.

"Good. Now go. He's likely at the front wall."

When they had cleared, only Rickert and Rhea remained at her side. "Good work, witch. You won 'em to our side," Rickert said with a nod. "For now at least."

"We'll go to the children now," Rhea said. "I know a path. Let us hope Logan's golems have all been dispersed. I can't imagine facing another eight of those things."

"Yes," Quelana agreed. And let us hope Lautrec hasn't done anything we'll all regret. "Lead on."

With that, the three of them headed deeper into the castle; the sound of a war drum banging outside drifting up from the shaft of the destroyed lift, approaching from Anor Londo, the army drawing near.

Chapter 31

"LOOSE!"

The castle wall filled with the sound of three dozen arrows being sent from their bows to sail through the parapets and down to the snowy lands below in a volley of death. Some stuck the ground, their wooden shafts protruding from the snows like a flag of failure, others wobbled and bowed and missed their mark entirely, but most of the arrows-and Solaire liked to think his second day of archery practice with the men was at least partially responsible-found their target. The first cluster of hollows had been coming around the bend from Anor Londo, rushing to the tunnel entrance of the archives bearing swords and shield and torches, when Solaire had given the command, and now they were dropping in clumps of half-dozens, spilling to the snows with shafts stuck in their belly's and chest's, their corpses choking off the path of the next group.

As the next group of hollows began clambering over their fallen brethren, Solaire lifted his arm and gave the order to nock, aim, and loose once more. The anxious nerves of those who had missed on their first draw seemed to have shaken free, and nearly every one of the thirty-six arrows found a body to bring death upon. The hollows collapsed atop the corpses of those who'd came before them, screeching a wretched, primitive, sound as they tumbled wildly over one another. One of the creatures burst free from the pack, slashing his sword at the air before him hatefully, as if cutting down some invisible foe. He'd nearly disappeared beneath the rocky fall of cliff rising beneath the Archive's wall before an arrow took his left shoulder, the momentum counteracting against the hollow's own momentum and sending him into a mad spin to the ground. He did not get back up.

Solaire looked to his side and saw his former squire, Henrik; the boy's eyes narrowed down upon the opponent he just fell. When his eyes drifted to Solaire's, the knight nodded his approval, and Henrik smiled. It was what was behindHenrik's shoulder that kept Solaire from returning the expression. Across the wall and beyond the hills to the East, the river of hollow soldiers stretched back along Anor Londo's upper wall, through its bridged section, and all the way back to its Great Chapel, where the largest of their force was gathered in a enormous circle as the sun faded in the West, painting them red and gold.

Solaire pulled his gaze from the sight, refusing to let it dampen his spirits, and raised his arm in command as the next cluster of hollows came rushing around the bend below the wall. "LOOSE!" He commanded, and another volley of arrows rained death upon their targets. That's over one hundred arrows gone now, he thought, watching as the hollows who hadn't fallen in the initial strike were methodically picked off by the archers. We have less than five hundred left... Sun watch over us.

He surveyed the men and women at his sides. If theywere as worried as he was, it wasn't showing, and that was good. The quivers of arrows at their boots were arranged so that the best quality arrows they had would be pulled first, but as they dug deeper and deeper within, Solaire knew the last of the arrows were poor things, wrestled free from animal carcases and trees and dirt, their shafts constructed of warped wood, their heads of chipped, haggard, metal. The archers were confident now when their strikes meant death to their opponents, but when they would start needing multiple shots to hit, Solaire could only hope it would not steal their determination.

"LOOSE!" He bellowed as the next cluster came pouring forth.

"Knight Solaire!" A voice called, and when he turned he saw the stout woman who'd been as fine a swordsman as any man amongst them, Winnie, come rushing forth, red in the face.

"My lady, what is it?"

"Here!" She cried out, beckoning him forth and turning to sprint down the length of the wall.

Solaire hopped from the raised bit of stone he'd been commanding from and followed after her. At the corner of the wall, she halted between the nook of parapets there and thrust a shaky finger down towards the path below. Solaire hurried up beside her and traced her point. "What's he doing!?" She asked.

A silver knight, protruding from the army of hollows around him like a shiny sword stuck in a stream of muddy, brown, water, had halted a group beside him and was staring up at the wall; the dark, gaping, pits of the thing's helm moving from end to end. It gestured back to the hollows, pointed towards Solaire, and fixed its look upon them once more.

"What do you think it's doin'?" The woman asked.

Solaire was opening his mouth to tell her he did not know when commotion amidst the hollows caught his eye. He craned his neck and leaned out over the parapets to see a chasm opening up in their center, the soldiers splitting apart so a rogue group could move forth. As they neared, Solaire saw they carried something large above their heads, something that required four of them to work together to move. The silver knight turned to them upon approach, bent to reach for it, and when he rose, an enormous greatbow came with him. The weapon stood end-to-end as tall as the knight himself. He set it into the ground at his feet, entrenching one end firmly into the snows there.

"Henrik!" Solaire called to the boy a bit further down the wall.

Henrik came running forth at once, skidding to a halt upon the icy surface of stone underfoot and nearly falling before Winnie took hold of him. "T-

thank you, m'lady," he said, then to Solaire, "Sir?"

"There, Henrik," Solaire commanded, pointing at the silver knight. "Loose your arrows there. Stop whatever it is they're trying to accomplish."

The boy nodded, stepped up to the parapet, and nocked an arrow.

Solaire had made it halfway back to his post when movement caught his eye once again. He halted and watched another group of hollows came running up through the gap. Hoisted above their heads, they carried a thick, steel, claw that looked like it may have been ripped free from some giant's mace. A maddeningly long length of chain trailed behind it, scraping the stone in places where the snow had been trampled away, sparks clawing at the air around it. They hauled the claw to the silver knight, who immediately began fastening it to the tip of a long, metal, shaft. Once adjoined, he nocked the shaft into the greatbow.

"Gods," Solaire muttered. "No man could possibly have the strength to loose such a thing thing... could they?" Whatever lurks below that thing's silver armor is no man, a voice reminded him.

The silver knight swept the tip of the shaft across the length of wall, settling it on a point near the corner. Solaire traced its path, and found Henrik - standing tall atop the parapets and loosing arrow after arrow upon the knight and cluster of hollows around him. "Henrik!" Solaire shouted, rushing back to the corner. "Get down!"

But it was too late.

The silver knight, somehow, someway, loosed the massive claw. It ripped through the falling snows, becoming a blurred ball of silver within, dragging the length of tethered chain along behind it. Solaire had made it just near enough to his former squire to see the boy's right shoulder explode as the claw thundered into it, tossed the boy aside with an insane force, and drove into the castle wall behind them with a great, thundering, crack. A shower of stone came sailing down around Solaire as the claw buried its way into the wall. The slack of the chain behind it pulled tight.

"Cleric!" Solaire shouted, rushing to his fallen squire. "Where is the priestess, Rhea!?" He lowered to a knee and laid his hand on the boy's chest. Henrik's shoulder was no longer where it should have been, only a mangled twist of blood and bone in its place.

A thin man in a robe of dark blue hurried forth from pack. He looked at Henrik, his face filled with an expression of disgust and sympathy, and turned back to Solaire. "S-She's not here. I-I'm the only c-cleric."

"Heal him," Solaire said, as Henrik groaned beneath him. "You c-can't heal t-that!"

"You can ease the pain, though, can't you?"  
"I can t-t-try..." The cleric muttered dejectedly.

"Then try," Solaire pleaded. He fixed the boy with confident look. "You will live, Henrik. Do you hear me? Stay strong, son. Praise the Sun."

"...praise the Sun..." Henrik muttered, his eyes closed to slits, his face frozen in a wince.

Solaire stood, eyed the chain, and traced its path back to the stairs adjoining Anor Londo to the Archives, where the silver knight was ushering the hollows around it near. They scurried forth, some so eager they moved on hands and feet like wild beasts, and began jumping up and taking hold of the chain. When they had a firm grasp of the thing, they swung their legs around its top and began pulling themselves along it, hand-over-hand and upside down. Right towards the castle wall.

"There!" Solaire shouted. "Men! Women! Fire THERE!"

The archers looked to him, then to the path of his finger, where the first hollow was making its way quickly towards the halfway point between the army and the wall.

"What in Izalith are they doing!?" A young man cried.

"Coming to cut yer balls off boy," an older man answered. "So listen to the Knight Solaire and FIRE!"

The young man did, and so did the rest of them. An arrow took the foul thing in the decaying flesh of its stomach. Taken unaware by the blow, its grip came loose, but only for a moment. The hollow's legs swung out below it, but the creature's hands held tight. Another arrow took its thigh, and a final one ripped through its throat. The hollow's mouth gaped into a soundless scream and it plummeted down the maddening fall to the streets of Anor Londo below.

By then, however, eight more had taken up the chain at its base and were scurrying forth along it the same as the first.

Solaire pulled cold air into his lungs to shake his nerves free, stepped back from the wall to survey his soldiers, and raised his voice to be heard over their shouting. "Listen! LISTEN TO ME! Those of you who scored highest in archery training, stay manned at the parapets. Those of you who did not, bring your quivers to the men around you and come take up arms. The fight is coming to the wall."

He watched a look of dismay come across nearly every one of their faces. The battle had seemed almost like a game to them until then, raining arrows down upon the mindless hollows from a hundred feet away, but now Solaire could see their thoughts had turned to actually fighting the

things up close, close enough to smell their rotting flesh, close enough to make detail of their hideous faces, close enough to die, and it had unnerved them.

"The Sun shines upon all of us my brothers and sisters!" He shouted. "Do not fear these creatures. They are hollow - mere husks of the men they once were! You are not! You are alive and you are trained and you are warriors and you will NOT fall to these creatures here today!"

"Aye!" One man shouted. Some others joined in, but the youngest of them would not have their fears removed so easily.

Solaire made the rounds as the lesser archers submitted their quivers to those who needed them, and made sure to clasp the young ones on the shoulders and offer encouraging words. He led the group down the walkway to the castle's corner, where the taught chain hung ominously overhead. He eyed the claw, of which only the very end was visible; the rest was buried deep within the wall. We could spend the next five minutes trying to pry that thing loose, he thought. And by the sixth minute, we'd still be working, and the hollow upon us.

"Arms!" He shouted, pointing to the smattering of iron swords and bucklers, spears and wooden shields, clubs and daggers, that lay in brackets beside the wall. The men and women moved forth quickly to take up their preferred weapon of choice. As they picked through the pile, the young fellow he'd sent to warn of the scouting party earlier came barreling around the corner of the guard tower.

"Knight Solaire!" He greeted, standing at attention and catching his breath.

"What has happened inside? Have the scouts been dealt with? Do you need aid?"

The young man frantically shook his head. "No, Sir. No! The witch was there! The witch- she burned 'em all up! Destroyed the lift too! No more are comin' up in through the tunnels, I can tell you that much!"

"Witch? You mean Quelana?"

"Aye! She threw fire and lava from her hand and burned them all back to Izalith! She's on our side!"

And thank the Sun for that, Solaire thought, a hint of a genuine smile coming to his face for the first time in a very long time. Behind the young man, a fresh group of men and women came pouring out to the wall from the guard tower. They glanced around, wide-eyed, at the archers and the chain protruding from the castle, but they did not shriek and they did not run.

"Witch sent 'em here," the young man went on. "Told 'em to follow your

command."

He looked to the group, thankful again for Quelana's assistance, and nodded. "Do any of you have combat experience or weapon training?"

A few stepped forth, the rest remained silent and wary.

"Alright," Solaire began. "Take up a blade if you can wield it and join us below that chain. Those of you who can't, stay to the rear and provide aid to those who call for it. Bring swords to the hands of those who lose their own, arrows that may fall astray back to their owners. Drag the wounded to safety should they fall. Understood?"

"Solaire!" Winnie shouted.

Solaire spun to the castle corner. A hollow had made it to the parapets and was twisting its body around to clamber up between them. It had made it nearly there when an arrow buried into the creature's temple, rocked its head back on its shoulders, and send the thing tumbling beneath the outer rim of the wall.

"To arms!" He wailed, pulled a sword and shield free from the bracket, and sprinted forth. A rumble of warcries thundered behind him, the men and women trailing at his heels. They crossed to the chain just as the next hollow was worming his way between the parapets. Solaire called for the archers there to clear out. The hollow tumbled through the gap of the parapets, scrambled to his feet, and eyed the fresh-skinned men and women around it, opening its mouth wide and hissing a primitive threat as it pulled its sword from its sheath.

Solaire stepped forward and the hollow's head snapped to his own. The thing's red eyes burned with a profound hatred. It lunged forward, the tip of its sword raised high above it, the blade catching the soft orange glow of dusk's dying light. Solaire caught the attack in a parry with his shield, tossed it aside, and let the hollow's own momentum carry the creature into his counter strike. His sword slid deep into the soldier's stomach as it groaned and slumped forth onto the blade. Solaire lifted his leg, planted his boot on the thing's stomach, and kicked. It came free of the sword and fell to the wall's stone floor, dead.

By the time it had, however, two more had appeared at the parapets.

Solaire lifted his blade and moved forward to strike-

-but four men came rushing around his sides and attacked the hollows instead, shouting and cheering and raining strike after strike upon the decaying soldiers before them until the things were littered with gashes and wounds. They hollows fell. The men cheered.

A crack boomed from further down the wall, sending every one of them ducking as if an explosion had occurred. Solaire spun on the noise and

found, with a sense of dread stealing across him, a second claw had been fired and was nestled into the stone corner of the castle at the opposite side; a lengthy, tight, chain running away from it just as the first had. He looked to the crowd of hollows marching forth along the path from Anor Londo and spotted the silver knight, who'd moved forward himself and unleashed the second chain. At its base, the soldiers were already leaping to climb along it.

Solaire turned back to the men and found four hollows, one, seemingly, for each of them, had made their way up the chain and through the parapets. The men were still jabbing and swinging, but without the ability to outnumber their foes as they had before, the hollows could block and parry and strike themselves. They were forcing the men back on their heels, clearing room for the dozen hollows still clinging to the chain behind them to crawl forth.

"Pull Henrik to the guard tower!" Solaire commanded the cleric knelt at his squire's side. The cleric's eyes had been transfixed on the approaching hollows, and Solaire's voice seemed to snap him from whatever daze had befallen his mind. He nodded, took hold of Henrik by the ankles, and dragged the boy back. Solaire moved beside the crowd and shouted, "There is a second force coming up that chain!" He pointed down the length of the wall. "The rest of you go and defend it! Go! Now!"

They rushed off without protest, and Solaire moved forward to help the four men defend their corner. One man backstepped into him. The knight moved him aside just in time to catch a downward strike from the hollow he faced atop his shield. Solaire jabbed to give himself some breathing room. The hollow side-stepped the attack instead of retreating, however, and Solaire used the opportunity to press his assault with a flurry of quick strikes. The hollow's shield caught the brunt of them, but the thing's stamina faltered on the last blow and Solaire drove a thrust into its chest.

Two more tumbled through the parapets and rushed him. Solaire swept his sword in a long arc to give halt to their attack. The hollows leapt back, hissing and beating their weapons against their shields. Solaire feigned a strike to the one on his left, and when the creature moved to block, he shifted the attack right and caught the arm of the unaware hollow beside him. The first hollow lifted his blade above his head to attack Solaire as the knight pulled his sword loose. He lifted his shield just in time to catch the blow and drove his sword up and into the bottom of the creature's chin. The tip of the blade exploded from the top of its decaying skull, the creature's eyes rolled back, and it slumped over dead. Solaire spun on the second hollow, but it had already been dealt with by the man he'd helped earlier.

Afforded a moment of brief respite, he glanced to the other side of the wall and saw the first of the hollows were just then reaching it, though a barrage of arrows flew from the archers and took a few unaware in the side, felling them to the forest below.

In his periphery, the red eyes of a climbing hollow came into view. Solaire spun and drove his blade between the thing's eyes just as it was ready to pull through the parapets. He ripped the sword loose and watched as the hollow plummeted. To his side, the men had whittled the three other hollows down to just one, and the four of them had it surrounded. One man feigned, another repeated the fake attack, and the third took the back of the creature's head with a blunted mace. They cheered as it fell to its death.

More came.

The parapets grew choked with soldiers as a hollow leaped over Solaire, leading him away and clearing room for the others to come. Solaire realized the plan, but too late, and by the time he looked back, a half- dozen had clambered to the wall and taken up a defensive stance. They pulled spears free from sheaths and marched forth in phalanx formation, jabbing out over the tops of their shields. His men, untrained for such a thing, began falling back. The hollow he'd been facing struck a poor blow at Solaire's head. The knight pulled back, tossed his shield aside to take up his sword in both hands, and slashed the thing near clean in two before turning and rushing back to aid his men facing the phalanx formation.

The hollows gave up on their pursuit when enough room had cleared behind them for their brethren to begin flooding out onto the castle wall, filling it with the stench of the dead. The spear soldiers held a tight line as more and more hollow came. Solaire rushed to the edge of the phalanx, and was greeted with a flurry of spear jabs over the tops of shields. He leaped back on his heels but could not spot a way to penetrate the wall of soldiers.

More came.

The wall is lost, a voice spoke in his head before he could silence it. He shook the hopeless notion away and approached the phalanx again. They jabbed and jabbed but would not break formation, and the men at his side could find no way around them. The area behind the phalanx was now so choked with soldiers, they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, red eyes peering out from behind the spearmen hungrily.

"My friend," a voice rumbled over his shoulder.  
Solaire turned-  
-and caught his Sunlight Straight Sword as it sailed towards him.

Black Iron Tarkus ducked beneath the arched passage of the guard tower, fully adorned in his armor, a massive greatsword clutched tightly at the hilt between his meaty fists. He bowed to Solaire and a hearty laugh rumbled out from beneath the helm. "Let us spill the blood of the wicked on this day together, my friend. Praise that good Sun!"

Without waiting for reply, Tarkus bellowed a warcry as loud as any Solaire had ever heard and sprinted forward, his massive black armor moving with surprising deftness, his sword wrenched back over his shoulder like a club.

The phalanx formation held their ground, bracing for impact as the massive man rushed upon them. Tarkus shouted, twisted his body to build momentum, and unleashed a thunderous sweep of his greatsword that started low and ended high and somewhere in the middle of it all - the phalanx was busted apart.

The spearmen rocked back on their heels, their shields coming loose at the impact of Tarkus' strike, and the big man did not allow them time to recover. Solaire joined to press the attack, and soon enough the four other men followed behind. His Sunlight Straight Sword back in his hand and his friend at his side, Solaire came alive with a burst of energy, cutting and swiping and jabbing and feigning as the hollows, backed into a corner with no room to maneuver, could only try in desperate attempt to stop him. Tarkus' giant sword came barreling into the center of their numbers, squashing a line of them flat to the ground.

When the brunt of the task was done, only a few swordsman remained with their backs to the parapets and their red eyes darting around in desperate hope to block the next blow.

The next blow, unfortunately for them, was another great sweep of Tarkus' sword, and it came with such force, it took two of the creature's head clean from their shoulders and a third was smacked so hard with the tail end of the strike, it tumbled out over the parapets and a roar from the creature was lost in the long, long, fall to the other side.

"Ha!" Tarkus cheered, beating a hand against his plated chest. "Let them come!" He stepped to the edge of the wall and cupped his hand around his mouth. "You hear that! Come! Come and die like the cowardly soldiers before you!"

Solaire looked to the other end of the castle. The men there were facing a far smaller force, and were holding their own quite well. A feeling of hope almost came across him.

Then he saw the winged demon.

Coming soaring up from the streets of the city was a pale demon with wings as white as snow and fangs protruding from its small, bat-like, head and snapping at the air around it aggressively.

"Archers!" Solaire called, fixing the beast with a baleful eye. "Strike this beast approaching down!"

The archers turned to the Eastern side of the wall, where the bat-winged demon's horned head came rising up over the parapets, the eyes aglow in

red just as the hollows had before it. Arrows flew free, clipping at the thing's wings and one sticking its leg. The demon screeched a terrible, shrill, cry, but continued to rise.

What in Izalith is it doing? Solaire wondered as it lifted higher and higher above them to the point where the arrows could only sail below its talons. It was then he spotted a brown, leather, bag clutched in the beast's feet.

"What do you think it wants?" Tarkus' deep voice came beside him. "Doesn't look like it wants a fight."

"I don't-" Solaire began, but his eyes had been holding on that queer bag in the demon's talons, and just at that moment, something spilled from within. He watched as it fell back to the city where the winged creature had first risen from. It was small and round and black and then it was gone, vanishing between the shadowed buildings below.

The demon soared higher still, and when it seemingly reached the apex of the climb it was attempting, it moved forth, directly overhead. Solaire watched as it circled the wall, lowering itself and adjusting and-

Small and round and black, he thought, and a terrible realization landed in his mind.

"CLEAR THE WALL!" He screamed, so sudden and loud, Tarkus himself took a step back.

"Clear the wall?" The big man echoed. "We'll be overrun, Solaire. We-"

"NOW!" Solaire wailed, and the archers and swordsman began moving towards him in a slow, confused, shuffle.

He looked skyward.

It was too late.

The bat-winged demon released the bag from within its talons, and the thing came sailing down upon them. Solaire made to shout a warning at those further down the wall who were too near to the bag, but his voice was lost as the sound of the bag's contents-a pack full of black firebombs- erupted upon impact.

Searing red fire scorched the sky as explosions rocked the wall in tight, brief, intervals. Men and women's screams sounded and were lost almost instantly. Something underfoot rumbled, and Solaire felt the whole castle wall lurching, as if recoiling from a mortal wound. A young man came stepping from the billowing black smokes and the lashing flames with his clothing burning upon his body. Another explosion boomed, and the parapets near the impact burst loose from their holdings, leaving a massive chasm along the wall's edge.

Somewhere amidst the chaos, a squad of hollows had climbed the chain and spilled onto the wall. Solaire turned to them and caught a blow atop his shield. Somewhere behind him, a woman was screaming, though whether it was for her own suffering or someone's else's, the knight could not say.

The sun had fallen beneath the mountains to the West, bringing night upon the castle as the firebombs' flames burned endlessly all around them, casting wild, dancing, shadows now upon what was left of the wall.

Solaire's eyes flicked to the city as he cut his way free from a pack of hollows. There, rising up from the torch-bearing soldiers all around them, a half-dozen more winged-demons were approaching.

Clutched in their talons were bags; full and brimming to the top with more death and destruction and pain than Solaire could possibly imagine.

With no other option however: he fought on.

Chapter 32

Lautrec pressed himself flat to the shadowed edge of the Great Hall's rear passageway and leaned out just enough to survey the chaos housed within. The castle had come alive in the last few minutes with the screams and wailing of the frightened, the shouts and warcries of the brave, and the rumblings of some faraway explosions from the upper levels whose origins Lautrec could not even begin to guess at. The Great Hall reflected the sounds well. Men and women were scrambling from place to place, snatching up what remained of the food and drink, children clinging dearly to the women's skirts, tears raining from their eyes. A squad of spear-wielding soldiers marched through the front, plucking shields from a bracket and disappearing beneath a side passage, heading towards those faint and distant explosions with steely looks upon their bearded faces. Another group came rushing out of the path a moment later carrying a man with a blood-soaked and mangled shoulder between them atop a greatshield, using the thing as a makeshift stretcher. They had just vanished through another doorway when the hulking figure of a crystal golem lumbered past, its metallic blue body catching the glow of the hall's torches as it walked right by unaware. The men and women watched it pass with baited breaths and collapsed with relief when the thing did not notice them. One child began screaming until one of the woman shook the boy so hard his head rocked against his shoulder. He took his thumb in his mouth and glared at her, but did not cry any further.

"This is my fault..."

Lautrec glanced to Abby beside him. The half of her face that was not hidden in shadow was pale and wide-eyed and lined with stress. She turned, fixing him with a blank stare, tears swelling in the corners of her once pretty blue eyes. "I brought this upon them. This... this death. It's my fault, Lautrec. My fault..."

She watched him, perhaps looking for some reassuring words in return. He had none to offer, however, and so, turned away from her to peer back into the Great Hall. The area was clearing out, the people scooping up the last of the bread and wobbling forth, loafs spilling from the top of their arms. They rounded up the children and started making their way towards the back of the hall: right towards the passage Lautrec stood beneath.

He pulled himself quickly out of sight, stepped before Abby, and pressed her to the wall between his arms. She began to open her mouth and his hand clamped over it. A moment later, the lot of them came scrambling through, the men silent and wary, the women scolding the children at the hems of their skirts, and the children themselves wiping tears and snot from their dirty little faces as they trailed eagerly behind. When they had passed the shadowed corner, Lautrec released Abby and moved back to

the doorway.

"Why did we hide from them?" Abby whispered.

"Because if we didn't they'd want something," he told her. "Everyone wants something. Learn that sooner rather than later, girl, and you'll live a lot longer."

"But it's my fault this has happened to them, Lautrec! I owe them my aid!"

"Your aid?" Lautrec questioned, watching as another crystal golem lumbered past the front of the Great Hall, its tree-trunk legs pounding the stone underfoot. "You don't have any aid to give. It's me they'd come begging to for protection or some mission to go retrieve a friend or family member. It's me who they'd set their hatred upon when I refused them." He could feel Abby's eyes boring into him. He glanced to her and sighed. "Don't give me that look. I told you a long time ago that this is no tale from one of your childhood stories and I'm not some heroic knight looking to save these people. I'm looking to live. Nothing more."

"You saved me..." she said quietly.

"I killed Logan," Lautrec corrected her. "You happened to be saved in the process." His body was gone though, his thoughts reminded him. Whether it be by some spell or miracle or trick: the sorcerer is not dead. Not yet.

Abby shook her head. "I don't believe you. You came to rescue me. I know you did. You stopped Logan from hurting me. You are a hero, Lautrec, even if you don't want to be."

He frowned. "Believe what you want, girl, but when the moment comes and your little fantasy is shattered, don't say I didn't warn you." He returned his gaze to the Great Hall. It was completely emptied then, and a long enough time had passed since he'd seen a golem that he figured the monsters had moved on. "Can you walk?"

"Yes," Abby told him. "And I just figured out how I'm going to prove that you're a hero. My hero."

"Good for you. Let's go." He grabbed her wrist and turned to the passage.

"You're not going to kill Anastacia," Abby said, halting his footsteps in place. "Because I'm going to stop you."

He turned to her, and his expression must have been dark because the little smile that had crept up Abby's face sunk immediately. "Stop me?" He snapped. Leave her, he thought. Leave the mad girl to the hollows and be done with her. If Ben still lives, there is hope yet for a Lordran without her.

"Yes," Abby went on, though his look had stolen the confidence from her

voice. "I'm going to set you free from your sister and then you can be mine. Be my knight. My hero."

She winced and he realized his grip on her wrist had tightened considerably. He loosened it, but only a bit. "Don't ever speak of Anastacia again. Do you understand me?"

Her eyes flicked between his fearfully. "Yes. I- I'm sorry."

Leave her, his thoughts pleaded once more. His hand and feet betrayed his mind, though, and he found himself dragging her along behind him as he slipped around the passage and into the Great Hall.

They moved through at a brisk pace, Abby's bare feet slapping against the stone behind him as he pulled at her wrist. A group of men passed outside the front entrance, heading in the direction the golems had earlier, but the two of them went unnoticed, and so they moved on. Lautrec led her around the end of a longtable, sidling past the spilled remains of some forlorn meal of meat and vegetables and into the side passage he'd spied the men carrying the wounded earlier. A long hall of ensconced torches and crimson carpeting awaited, at the end of which was a wooden door swung open on its hinges. Lautrec pulled Abby beside it, took hold of her shoulders, and moved her beside the wall there.

"Don't move and don't speak to anyone. If someone comes, shout for me. Understand?"

Abby's eye widened apprehensively, but she nodded her acquiescence all the same. "What are you going to do?"

He ignored her question, pulled his shotels free from their sheaths, and slipped around the corner of the doorway.

There were six of them: one soldier with a spear beside the door, watching the others; two men whose swords resting in their hilts at the back of the room; one tall, older, man with a dusting of gray hair and a mace in hand; and the last of them was a wounded boy lying on the greatshield, and a cleric in blue robes kneeling beside him.

It was the spearman who saw him first. The man made to lift his weapon, but Lautrec caught the tip resting against the ground beneath one foot and drove the heel of his other into the middle of the shaft. The spear splintered in half, useless, and Lautrec darted forward to the two swordsmen at the rear of the room. The cracking of the spear had caught their attention, and both their weapons were drawn by the time he reached them. The first yelped and took a swing at him. Lautrec caught the blade in the curve of his shotel, twisted so the man's wrist bent unnaturally, and flung the weapon aside. The second man threw a jab at him. Lautrec shifted sideways, grabbed his attacker's wrist, and pulled him into his body. He spun the man, raised his shotel to his neck, and

twisted so they were facing the other five.

"What in Izalith are you doing!" The grey-haired man snapped, stepping forth with his mace gripped in a two-handed approach. "Who are you! What do you want!?"

"Answers," Lautrec told him calmly, pressing his blade a bit deeper into the squirming man's throat between his arms. "If you value this man's life you'll give them to me: quick, clear, and true."

"He broke my spear..." the spearman muttered, lifting the half of his weapon that still remained in his hand and shaking it dejectedly.

Grey-hair ignored him. "Alright. Ask your bloody questions then! Don't you kill that man! There's a damned war raging out there and you-"

"Shut up," Lautrec snapped.

The man's mouth hung open incredulously, but he had, in fact, shut up.

"I need to know where Anastacia of Astora is."

"The firekeeper?"

"That's right."

A clueless look made the rounds on the men's faces, each looking to the next for an answer.

Lautrec felt his blood heat, the skin of his arm itch, his breath grow heavy. He lifted the blade higher into his captive's neck, prompting a quiet whimper from the man. "Someone better have an answer if you don't want this man's blood on your hands."

Grey-hair's face scrunched up indignantly. "We don't know you cruel bastard! Can't you see that? Let him go and-"

"Logan took her," the soft, shaky, voice of the wounded boy croaked from the floor.

Lautrec narrowed his eyes on the young man. "Took here where, boy?"

The kid coughed, wincing and grabbing for his wounded shoulder. The cleric stopped him and wrestled it away, bringing a talisman to his elbow and whispering some miracle instead. A soft, yellow, light bathed the boy's arm, settling him a bit. "I don't know," he groaned. "He sent Chester after her to... bring her to him. That's... all I know." He coughed. "I swear."

Lautrec held the boy's eyes, testing his honesty. When he saw he would get no further answer he sighed and looked back to the man with gray hair. "Alright. What's happening on the wall?"

"War is what's happening!" The man snapped, shoving a finger back in the direction they'd come. "And you're wasting my ti-"

"How many?"

The man shook his head, a blank expression befalling his face. "More than you could imagine. Hundreds. Tens of hundreds. It is hard to say. Their numbers stretch from the wall back to Anor Londo itself."

Then the girl isn't as mad as they all believed, Lautrec thought. Hundreds of hollows... Gods help us. "Who has command on the wall?"

"The Knight Solaire."

"And how does he fare?"

"Poorly," the man told him, his look darkening. "They rain black firebombs on us from the skies with their wretched bat-winged demons. They've loosed great chains upon the walls that the hollows are using to carry themselves near. The Sun Warrior is holding his ground with Tarkus and the few trained men that remain to us, but... it is a lost cause."

Lautrec frowned. "Then what are they still doing up there?"

"Buying us time!" The man growled. "Which is why I don't have anymore to stand here wasting with you! Now unhand him and-"

"What is Solaire buying you time for?" Lautrec interrupted, fixing the man with a shrewd look.

Grey-hair's eyes flicked to his compatriots; their own shying away immediately. When the man looked back to him, his jaw and brow were set in stoic lines. "We're to gather what firebombs remain to us... and then we're to blow the entrances leading up to the wall. It is lost. The only way to buy more time now is to seal off our exits. Solaire and the rest... they have chosen to forfeit their lives so that the rest of may keep our own. We will collapse the entrances."

"You'll be trapped."

"We'll be alive," the man said. "And for now, that's all we can hope for."

He opened his mouth to tell the man what a foolish plan they had come up with, when movement in his periphery caught his attention. He turned to see Abby walking into the room with her hands raised. "Wait!" She pleaded. "Wait you don't have to do this!"

"Abby, get back!" Lautrec snapped.

But the grey-haired man had already taken hold of her. He wrapped her body up in his thick arm and pulled her to him, setting his mace at the side of her head. "P-Please!" Abby pleaded, though she was not struggling

against the man who'd taken her captive. "I know what they want! I can stop this all! I can stop anymore people from dying! You don't have to trap the Knight Solaire! Please!"

"Silence, girl," the man barked. His eyes moved from her to Lautrec. "Who are you and why are you together with Logan's mad princess?"

"Mad? She's the Chosen, Sir," the spearman whispered, staring at Abby and rubbing his fingers against his chin.

"She's mad is what she is," he growled. "Everyone knows it. She strummed up false hope upon us all and look what it's brought us? She's a ruse. Just another of Logan's tricks." He turned back to Lautrec. "Now you answer me, young man. Who are you? What is your name?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm here for Anastacia, nothing more," Lautrec explained. "I don't care about you or Solaire or this war for that matter. However, the girl is coming with me. If you harm her... the five of you will die here in this room."

"Please!" Abby shouted. "No one has to die! I'll go to them! I will! I'll stop this!"

"Silence!" The man barked again, shaking her in his arm til she quieted down.

Lautrec's fingers itched, the blood in his chest heating. "Don't do that again," he told the man as calmly as his anger would allow.

"You have to listen to me!" Abby went on. "I'm not mad! I promise you! If I go to the hollows they will stop! I-"

"Lies!" The man snapped. "You and Logan and Chester, you're all liars! Now the good men of this castle are dying all around me and yet you treacherous lotlive on!"

"You're hurting me," Abby said, squirming against his arm.

"Am I? But can you truly feel pain? Aren't you supposed to be the Chosen!? Aren't you supposed to be our savior!? HUH!? AREN'T YOU!?" The man's face twisted with rage and he raised his mace.

Lautrec shoved his captive to the floor, wrenched his arm back, and hurled his shotel across the room. It spun, cutting through the air, and lodged itself in the side of grey-hair's neck. Blood spurt across the wall beside him, his mouth fell agape, and his eyes turned on Lautrec's with wide incredulity. He choked, blinked, and slumped to the ground dead.

Lautrec crossed the room, shoved Abby into the corner, and spun back to bring up his shotel in defense.

The others hadn't moved. They only stared blankly at their fall soldier as the blood left his neck in great red rivers. Lautrec knelt and pulled the weapon free.

"He killed Edd," one of the swordsman muttered.

"Edd was going to kill the Chosen," the spearman pointed out. "I'd rather see him dead than her. She's... well, she's the Chosen."

Lautrec wiped the man's blood away from his shotel, dragging the blade along his breeches. He lifted the weapons and faced each of the men in turn. "If you blow the entrances, you're all fools."

Abby stepped to his side and took hold of his arm. She glanced upon the old man's body he'd killed and grimaced before turning quickly away and closing her eyes. "Solaire must live."

He faced her and frowned. "What?"

"I can't tell you why, Lautrec, but Solaire must live. He's... important," Abby explained, swiping a tear from her cheek. "You have to save him." He began to protest, but she pressed on, cutting him short. "I know I've seemed mad. Everyone says so. I haven't slept in a long time. It's made me... act strangely at times. I understand that. But I've also been right about things, haven't I? I said the hollows would come and they did. I'm not crazy, Lautrec. Please believe me. No one else will."

He held her eyes; those deep, blue, pits that housed a myriad of mystery and wonder. She had been right. Time after time, as mad as she seemed, she'd been right. It was her who calmed the Taurus Demon at the Firelink Shrine when they all had thought it would rip her into bits. It was her who had warned of the hollow army gathering in the city, and it had been her who knew exactly when they were marching. All around him was death and insanity and confusion and wrongness, and yet here before him stood the one thing in Lordran that seemed right.

"...alright, girl," he told her. "I believe you." She smiled.

"Don't think that means I'm going to start taking your orders," Lautrec went on, stealing some of the hope from her expression.

"We are sealing the entrances," the spearman said. "It wasn't Edd's order. It was Solaire's himself."

"Please, Lautrec," Abby pleaded, clasping her hands together at his chest. "Please don't let him die."

Should have left her, he thought as her widened eyes held his own, silently begging. He turned to the spearman. "Give me five minutes

before you set off the bombs."

The soldiers shared uncertain looks. The spearman shrugged. "Five minutes? ...yeah. Alright. I can do that." He faced Abby. "I believe in the Chosen. Well... not much else to believe in these days, I suppose, but... it's somethin'."

"Thank you," she whispered.  
"We have to move now though," he told her. "Then move," Lautrec said.  
They did.

Shouting and the clashing of metal on metal could be heard before they'd even made it halfway to the guard tower. At the bottom, where an arched passage gave way to a spiraling set of stone steps that twisted up to the Archives' wall, Lautrec could smell the death lingering from within. Something overhead rumbled so deeply, the walls themselves shook; a torch spilling loose from its sconce and nearly taking the carpet in flame before one of the swordsman snatched it up. A scream echoed down the stairs; man or woman, Lautrec did not know. The sound of excruciating pain was genderless.

"Five minutes," the spearman reminded him, stepping to the edge of the passage and shaking a group of brown firebombs to the floor. "Then we light these and blow the damned thing shut. Can only hope the explosion is enough to bring the stone down around it."

"If it isn't?" Lautrec asked.

He shrugged. "Then when the hollow overtake the soldiers up top, they flood into the castle itself and we all die."

"You can still give me to them," Abby said. "I... I'm not afraid."

Lautrec looked to her. "You're shaking," he pointed out. "And you forget, girl, that the hollow have always held contempt for man. Even if it is you they came for, there's no guarantee they'll stop once they obtain you. They're too close to victory now. They can likely smell our flesh, hunger to rip it from our bones. They won't stop. Not until every man and woman in this castle breaths their last breath."

The soldiers at his side grimaced as if he'd fed poison to their thoughts. Abby stared at the ground near her feet, a pensive look lining her face. Somewhere above, another scream sounded.

Lautrec pulled his shotels free. "Five minutes. I'll be back." He waited til Abby raised her head and looked at him. "You've been right before. You better be right now. And this time don't go anywhere. Understand me?"

She nodded.

"You," he told the spearman. "She's the Chosen. You said it yourself. Guard her with your life."

"You don't tell us what to do!" One of the swordsman snapped. "You killed Edd!"

"And I'll kill you as well if harm should befall her."

"...bastard knight," the man muttered, but there was fear in his face, and Lautrec knew he'd gotten the message.

Without further hesitation, he shouldered around the passageway and began the long climb to the wall. With every step he ascended, the smell of smoke and death grew more pungent, the cold of the outside layered a thick sheet of ice on his bare arms and face, the screaming and shouts and clashing of metal rose up a violent, maddening, crescendo, and then-

-he was there. The exit was so choked with black smoke, he had to bury his face in the pit of his elbow as he raised the other arm to shield the way forward and plunge outside. Swords smacked together in his ear, and when his vision cleared of the smoke, he saw fires, great and sweeping fires, that had littered the wall in red and orange clusters, black smoke billowing into the dark night above so thickly, they took on the form of massive, ebony, knights towering overhead. Corpses, both man and hollow, were sprawled out in the snows everywhere he looked, their blood painting the white a deep crimson. Some of their limbs were detached, lying useless beside their owner's body. At the edge of the wall, those who had not yet fallen were locked in combat; swords and shields battering against the hollows as the decaying creatures crawled over parapets like streams of brown sewer water spilling to the wall.

He stepped forward, a fire blazing so furiously to his right, he could feel the heat on his cheek, threatening to singe the hairs there. He marched past it, squinting in the smoke, nearly tripping on the crawling figure of a hollow with no bottom half. His eyes swept the length of the wall, looking for Solaire, but found the soldiers damn near indistinguishable from one another beneath the black night sky, even with the fires burning around them.

A man and hollow were locked in a sword fight at the wall as he trudged through the snows past them, but the hollow had taken its opponent unaware with a barrage of strikes, and he saw the soldier's stomach explode in a geyser of blood as the creature planted its blade in his belly. The thing hissed and its red eyes darted wildly around for the next thing to kill. They landed on Lautrec. It moved forward, taking its blade up in both hands and rushing to drive it down upon him. Lautrec threw his shotel the short gap between them before the creature could cross it. It stuck the thing in the chest, dropping it to its knees. He moved before the

hollow, took hold of the stuck shotel, and swung his other around at the thing's neck. Its head slid free from its body as the blade sliced through. He wrestled his weapon free and marched on.

Behind him, one of the explosions he'd heard from below thundered in his ear and shook the ground beneath his feet. A flash of fire came up over his shoulder, briefly painting the scene before him in its light. He hadn't realized just how many hollows there were until that moment. They stretched all the way back to the end of the wall shoulder-to- shoulder, outnumbering the men by at least five to one. The situation was as hopeless as the soldiers below had told him, and Lautrec suddenly found himself eager to find the damned Warrior of the Sun and be done with it. He kicked snows from his path and trudged forth as another explosion rumbled back the way he'd come and a chorus of screams filled the night air.

He watched as a pack of hollows swarmed a sole man, surrounded him, and leaped atop him from all sides, hacking away with axes and clubs. Further down the wall, a woman at the parapets was wrestling with a hollow. The creature brought the hilt of its dagger down on her wrist and the woman screamed and dropped her shield. The hollow took hold of her and flung her back through the parapets where her screaming faded to silence as she fell. Another group of hollows overwhelmed a pair of archers who'd taken refuge behind an empty bracket, cutting them down as they scrambled for their daggers. At the corner of the wall, something white and taloned flashed by overhead screeching, and a moment later, the night filled with the sounds of another cluster of explosions. The searing flames ripped at the skies around it as the black firebombs went off. Lautrec raised a hand to shield his eyes, cut down a hollow attempting to charge him amidst the chaos, and moved forward again.

"The wall is lost! To Izalith with this madness! RETREAT!" A young man screamed and came barreling past him, flinging his weapon to the snows.

"No! Hold your ground!" A voice commanded.

Lautrec followed it around a curve in the wall and found the owner. The Knight Solaire was locked in combat with a half-dozen hollows around him. They were slashing and cutting, but the man had his shield up to his chest, and the blows he did not catch with it, he stepped back and to the side to avoid. One tried a stab, but Solaire swatted the attack aside and countered with a stab of his own. Three more tried pouncing. The knight ripped his sword loose from the fallen hollow and leaped back on his heels to dodge the trio. Lautrec moved forward, his fists tightening around the hilts of his shotels. Two of the creatures were close enough for him to lunge and bury his curves blades into the back of their necks. One turned to spin at the commotion and Solaire caught him with a jab. The other three hissed and broke apart to deal with them, but both Lautrec and, apparently, Solaire had the same idea. They pressed forth, sandwiching the hollows, and hacked them down in a flurry of swipes.

When the work was done, the hollows lying at their feet in clumps of rotten flesh, Solaire fixed him with a curious look. "You have my thanks, friend!" He shouted over the sounds of chaos. His eyes moved to Lautrec's weapons and held upon them. He was quiet a moment, then said, "You're him, aren't you? You're the Knight of Carim? Lautrec?"

"I'm here to bring you inside," Lautrec shouted.

Solaire shook his head. "No, friend. My place is here! The wall must hold until the passages are closed. The wall-"

"-is lost!" Lautrec yelled as another explosion boomed around the bend. "Don't be a fool, Sun Knight. To stay here is to die!"

"And to die in combat is a good death!"

"A long life is better than a good death!" Lautrec snapped. "Abby sent me! Your Chosen! She... she commands you to retreat!"

"...Abby?" Solaire echoed, his eyes drifting over Lautrec's shoulder. "But..."

"Come on!" Lautrec shouted. "They're going to blow the entrance!"

Solaire looked to his men fighting around them. His eyes swept the length of the wall back and forth, and when they returned to Lautrec, there was a steely determination burning within. "No, friend. I'm sorry. Tell the girl she has my apologies. My place is here."

There are few things less stubborn than a knight with his honor intact, Lautrec thought, the distant words of some long lost friend. He's important, Abby's voice came next. Important.

"Hollow!" Lautrec shouted, pointing his shotel to the knight's rear flank.

Solaire raised his sword and spun-

-and Lautrec stepped forth, took his shotel in both hands, and drove the hilt into the back of the man's head. Solaire stumbled to one knee, but remained conscious, so Lautrec repeated the attack. The second time, Solaire fell.

He was positioning himself at the knight's feet, ready to take him by the ankles and drag him back to the guard tower when a booming voice rumbled over his shoulder, "Hey! What happened!"

Lautrec turned to see the biggest man he'd ever looked upon rushing their way. His hands instinctively went for their weapon, but he made them halt. He knows nothing, he thought.

"Gods, has Solaire fallen!?" The man asked from beneath the black iron casing of his helm, and his voice carried a surprising tenderness to it.

"Only unconscious!" Lautrec told him. "A hollow bashed his head off the wall! He needs to be moved inside! Can you carry him!?"

"Aye," the man said, bending to scoop Solaire over his shoulder. When he'd managed, he spun on Lautrec and narrowed his eyes shrewdly. "Who are you? I don't remember seeing you?"

"Lost my helm," Lautrec told him. "I usually keep it on."  
The big man nodded, accepting the answer with some hesitation.  
"The entrance has not yet been destroyed! Come!" Lautrec commanded.

The two moved out at a sprint-Lautrec noting the impressive deftness of the big man carrying the knight on his shoulder-and rounded the corner back to the main sect of wall. The war raged on as furious as ever, the hollows numbers growing around them by the second. Fresh fires spit venomous clouds of black smoke into wild tangles that the two of them had to sidle around. Twice, a group of hollows broke off from the men they were entangled in combat with, but both times Lautrec's shotels cut them down before they could halt their progress. He led them all the way back to the guard tower, watching as the big man had to duck his head to clear the arch, and down the spiral of stairs to-

-a pile of rubble and nothing more.

"No good bastards..." Lautrec muttered, kicking at a stone underfoot. "They blew the entrance already. Damn those cowards!"

"The second guard tower then!" The man in black armor's voice boomed. "Step aside," Lautrec told him, looking past his shoulder.  
"Huh?"  
"Step aside now."

The man did. Lautrec climbed thee stairs, met the pair of hollows who'd been sneaking up behind them, and hacked them apart with his shotels. When the work was done, he sheathed and spun on the man. "Can you still carry him?"

"I can carry two of him if need be. Don't you worry about me. Just keep cutting them hollows down."

Lautrec nodded, turned, and sprinted back up the stairs.

They spilled out to the wall just as a chorus of screams came wailing from the outer rim. Lautrec watched as a knight even larger than the man carrying Solaire came crawling up from the parapets. As the flames lashed around it, he saw it was one of Anor Londo's silver knights, and the thing stood at least seven feet tall, towering above the men around it. It got its

footing and swung its sword, just as silver and just as big, in a wide sweep, cutting down two men in a flash.

"RETREAT!" The big man's voice shouted behind him. "The wall is done! Only the western guard tower remains! Fight your way back inside! FIGHT!"

Lautrec did just that, cutting down a hollow that charged them with a torch and dagger. He ran forward, cutting them a path beside the wall and down to the guard tower at the far end. All around them, now that the order had been given, the men and women were attempting to do the same, though many were faltering, too hasty in their retreat and too reckless in their defense, and many were falling easily to the hollow. Overhead, a great metal claw thundered into the wall, sending chips of stone raining around them. Lautrec saw a chain had joined the other six or seven chains, creating another bridge for the hollows to close the gap on them.

They made their way to the western tower, where a man and woman stood together, fighting off the hollows that neared and ushering in the men. Their eyes fell to Solaire's limp body and a look of dread filled their faces.

"He lives," the big man explained as he ducked inside. "Let's go!"

Lautrec glanced over his shoulder. The wall was so choked with hollow then, it was as if the floor itself had come alive; the thing's red eyes packed so tightly against one another, they resembled a mass of fireflies floating forth in the night. At their rear, a silver knight lumbered forth, and Lautrec saw a second joining further down between the parapets.

He was turning to head inside when a shout caught his attention. His eyes found a sole soldier amidst the growing horde of hollow, swinging a sword wildly in a two-handed grip. When the soldier shouted and turned to cut down a creature, Lautrec saw it was a woman, a squat and stocky woman with her teeth barred and her eyes wide.

Fool, he thought, glancing around at the approaching hollow. She was the last one left besides himself. Only a fool would stand their ground when the battle is lost. A fool... or a hero. Lautrec was no fool and he was no hero, and so, he turned and rushed inside.

His feet had fallen only to the first step when the damned woman's voice shouted again, and the sound was so pathetic and desperate and loud, he halted, grit his teeth, and took up his shotels.

When he stepped back onto the wall, the idiot was still swinging her weapon around wildly at the approaching hollow.

"Didn't you hear the order you fool!?" He shouted. "Get your ass inside!"

She turned to him and a hollow lunged, clipping her arm and causing her blade to fall from her hands. She bent to pick it up, but wound up slipping in the snows. A hollow came up beside Lautrec and swung a club for his head. He ducked, caught the creature in the belly with his blade, and ripped its abdomen to shreds. "Come on!" He commanded again, flicking his eyes to the fallen women as she scrambled forth on hands and knees. Three hollows rushed the guard tower and Lautrec cut them down in a series of frantic swipes. Five more were coming. Then a sixth joined them. Then a seventh. Then the whole damn wall was flooding down around him.

He reached forward, snatched the woman's pudgy wrist, and yanked her inside. She clambered to her feet and looked at him with a pale, dazed, expression. "Th-thank you."

A moment flashed when her face became Anastacia's and Lautrec nearly wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed the life out of the fool. Then the hollows were clustering the doorway and he snapped out of the daze, laid his hand on her shoulder, and shoved.

The two of them rushed down the stairs, the sounds of hissing and growling and the stench of death so tight at their heels, Lautrec thought they'd be hacked down before they ever reached the inner keep.

"BLOW IT!" He heard a voice demanding from below. "BLOW IT NOW!" "Wait!" Another voice pleaded.  
"BLOW IT NOW!"  
They blew it.

Lautrec stumbled forth, catching the portly woman in the back as a string of firebombs erupted around the rim of the passageway.

He was aware of pain and a blinding white light and little else.  
Sound fled Lordran, leaving him in a smothering blanket of heavy silence. His eyes opened. Closed. Opened.

His vision was a blur, but he found his eyes could hold open if he focused. There was a man hovering over him, and somewhere from a distant chasm of Lautrec's mind, he recognized it at the spearman from earlier. The man spoke, but the sound was still gone from Lordran, perhaps gone forever, and Lautrec could only stare as the lips before him moved in silent formation. He pulled his gaze from the spearman to look around at the gathered men and women and soldiers and-

Abby, he tried to say, though it was impossible to know if he'd succeeded or not. Where's Abby?

The man moved his lips a lot then, but Lautrec could hear none of the information they were sharing; none until the very end, when he was able to read the man's lips and decipher a single word.

The word was: "Chester"

Chapter 33

He shoved her forward into the room so forcefully, Abby's feet tangled beneath her and she ended up spilling to the floor. Her hands caught the soft carpeting beneath her, but her arms did not carry the strength needed to prevent her cheek and temple from smacking against it; the thin layer of carpet not enough to protect her from the hard stone beneath. A black curtain draped her vision, but when she lifted herself on trembling arms and shook her head, the curtains lifted alongside her. She crawled forward into the bedroom that the two of them had once shared, wrapped her hands around the post at the end of the bed, and pulled herself to her knees.

Chester stormed past her, throwing his crossbow down upon the bed and ripping the closet doors open near its end to dig inside. Abby watched, her eyes flicking between the man who had been her first true kiss and now whom she despised and the weapon lying beside her. It was unloaded, the bolts bundled together in a quiver slung to Chester's hip, but the allure of the thing still held her attention. If I could, I'd kill you, Chester, she thought. And with you, I'd kill the foolish girl who thought she might have loved you once. The girl has to die so the woman can live.

Clothing began falling to the bed beside the weapon: heavy and fur-lined boots; a thick coat with white woolen trimming; dark cloaks; scarves; gloves. Abby watched them rain down upon the mattress beside her as Chester flung them back. When the trail ended, he spun, marched before her and snatched her wrist.

"Get up," he commanded, pulling at her arm. "Get up and dress yourself."

"I can't," she croaked, and it was only half a lie. With little food and less sleep afforded to her the last few days and nights, her strength had all but fled her body. She had walked, ran even, with Lautrec, but Lautrec was her knight, and his presence gifted her the strength of a knight.

"Don't be a child," he said, pulling harder still at her arm.

"You're hurting me," she said.

The words, for whatever reason, sparked a quiet fury in Chester's eyes. He grimaced, bent to snatch up her other wrist, and yanked her to her feet before tossing her onto the bed. Abby bounced as she fell upon it, thankful there was no layer of stone beneath waiting to pull those dark drapes over her eyes again, and tried scrambling off the other side to flee the man at her feet. He caught her by the ankles, dragged her back, and pinned her in place. For one, terrified, moment, she saw his hand move towards the sheathed dagger at his hip and his face darken. The moment passed, his eyes moved to the clothing beside her, and he began dressing her. The boots were pulled over her bare feet and tightly laced. The coat

wrapped her thin frame in its thick embrace, falling all the way to her knees. He tugged the cloak down around her, dark and snug and hooded.

"What are you going to do with me?" She asked as he made final adjustments to her new clothing.

"Save your life," he said, pulling the laces of a boot just a bit tighter to her foot. "Or end it. I suppose that depends on how much you fight me, Abby."

"I hate you," she said before she could stop herself. She immediately hated herself for saying it. It was the sort of thing a foolish little girl, not very much unlike the one she'd been when she'd kissed him, would declare; a useless display of emotion. Lautrec would have been disappointed.

Chester only grinned. "Now you do. You might still one day love me. As I love you."

"That's a lie!" She shouted, finding a strength in her anger. "When they took me, those cultist dragon-worshipers, they told me a lot of things and most of them, I knew were untrue, but the one thing I knew above all others to be real... was that you were sent to charm me by Logan. You... you lied then and you're lying now!" Don't cry, an inner voice commanded, not entirely unlike Lautrec's. Only girl's cry.

Chester's dark eyes held her own. "It is true, Abby. Logan set me upon you to win your heart and ensure your allegiance to him."

She had believed it since Quelana-or whatever demon had replaced Quelana-had told her, but hearing Chester say it himself left her feeling as hollow as she'd felt in the Undead Asylum. Only girl's cry.

"However," Chester went on. "For better or for worse, I did wind up falling in love with you, Abby. I want you to be mine. If there are only a handful of days left in this cold world of ours, I wish to spend them with you at my side."

She narrowed her eyes on his. "You're a violent and cruel man and I feel nothing but disgust for you. My heart belongs to another." She thought of Lautrec, the way his arms had felt around her after he'd killed Logan to rescue her. He was a man, a knight, and looking upon Chester, she could only see a boy's face; pretty and youthful and foolish. Not unlike her own had once been before the nightmares had come and stolen all three of those qualities from it.

Chester's look darkened. Abby had seen the face before: the last time, he'd made it just before he slapped her. She tried moving back on the bed to distance herself from him, but his hand gripped her at the elbow and pulled. She stumbled to her feet and Chester wasted no time dragging her behind him to the bath chamber.

"I confess my love and you attempt to break my heart?" He snapped, his grip tightening. "You're a little spoiled bitch, you know that Abby?" He yanked at her arm, nearly causing her to lose her footing again, and shoved her against the rim of the tub inside the bath chamber. "If these our are final days, don't think I'll allow you to ruin them for me."

She gripped the edge of the tub, desperately trying to relieve the pressure Chester was applying to squeeze her between him and it. Her mouth opened to plead with him, but Chester swung a bucket of water beneath her, grabbed the back of her head, and plunged her face into it. The liquid within was so icy cold, her eyes shot open, despite the water's attempt to shut them. She screamed but the sound was nothing but a gurgling choke and a stream of bubbles raising up from the corner's of her lips. She thrashed her arms and legs, but she was too weak to break Chester's hold on her, and the fighting was only making her lungs more desperate for air. He's not going to let me up, she realized, a panic pounding her heart into a wardrum ten times louder than the one banging outside the Archives' walls. I'm going to drown in a bucket of water. Only girls cry, though, she thought, and somehow the mad thought brought her peace. And I won't cry.

When the world dimmed and the black curtains threatened her vision once again, the bucket came away. She gasped at the air, the lingering water on her lashes and brow keeping her half-blind, and shook her head. There was water in her nose, in her mouth, in her ears, and just as it was beginning to clear, Chester plunged her down into that icy hole once again.

Four times he repeated it. Four times she was pulled free in a panic, given a moment of respite, and plunged back under, and by the last time, she was wishing he would just keep her under and let her misery end. Instead, he grabbed a fistful of what little hair remained to her and yanked her head back to face his own. He wiped water from her eyes and stare coldly into them. "Do you love me yet?"

She coughed, feeling water trickle from the corner of her mouth and down the back of her throat, and as her vision cleared and his face came into focus, she knew telling him the truth was, somehow, another important step in killing off the foolish girl she'd been and birthing the strong woman she'd need to be if she ever hoped to win Lautrec's affection. "No," she told him. "I don't."

Chester squinted, and perhaps if it had not been for the distant rumbling of some explosion taking the wall outside, he would have stuck her back under the water. The sound caught his attention, though, and he sighed impatiently. "Get up," he growled, pulling at her arm.

Abby stumbled behind him, her hair and face and the top of her coat wet and cold, and Chester led her to the room's end, worked the door open to a crack, and peered outside. Distant shouting trailed into the room, but

the hall must have appeared empty; Chester swung the door back and pulled her behind him into it.

"Where are you taking me?" She asked as they raced down the hall.

"The Crystal Cave," he answered, not bothering to turn and face her as he rounded a corner.

"But... why?" Abby questioned. They'd had to read about the various caverns and mountains of Lordran in school back in Vinheim. The Crystal Cave was a very old, enchanted, place nestled into the same mountain range as the Archives. They said Seath the Scaleless, betrayer of dragons, resided there, kept alive for an eternity by the infamous Primordial Crystal.

"Because the castle is falling," Chester told her as they began the descent of a flight of stairs. "And everyone in it will die before the next nightfall." He glanced back at her. "Of that much, you were right."

"But the Crystal Caves house no exit!" Abby pleaded. "If you take us in there, we'll be trapped!"

"Open your eyes, Abby, we're trapped now. The hollows flood around this castle like a great river, and it is only a matter of time before they find some crack to begin pouring in through. One way or another, Lordran and all its rotten inhabitants are coming to an end. Logan says as much himself. I intend to extend our demise... so that we may spend the final days of this world in each other's embrace. As lovers."

"I don't love you!" She shouted, louder than she'd intended.

He halted so suddenly, she stumbled right into his arms. He caught her and took hold of her chin so her eyes were locked upon his own. "The end of days will put a warmth in your heart for me yet, Abby. It will be hard not do when I am the only thing that remains to you in the dark husk that will be Lordran."

"Lordran isn't ending," she said defiantly. "I won't let it. Lautrec won't let it."

The walls rumbled, sending tremors up into the soles of Abby's feet. From the top of the staircase, she could hear men shouting at one another and a child screaming and crying and begging for their mother. A clash of swords rang somewhere further off; the distant echo of battle and death. Chester ignored these sounds, a grin creeping up his face; the face she'd once found so comely. "Oh you poor girl," he cooed. "Is that it? Is that why you deny my love? For him? The knight of Carim?" Chester laughed. "Oh, Abby, you've fallen for a man with no heart you foolish thing. I know Lautrec. Logan knows Lautrec. He is a man far more broken than I. The only thing he might love is the lust for murder... of his poor, sweet, sister."

Abby glared, but offered no reply. It was how Lautrec himself would have responded, and even if her own look was a pale imitation, it had the right effect on Chester: he frowned, held her eyes, but said no more.

At the bottom of the stairs, they came upon the bannister-enclosed walkway of the library's second floor. Here, it was as if the war had already come and stricken its plague upon the room. It was deserted, tables and chairs overturned (likely by the rush of panicked men and woman), books fallen free from their shelves and splayed out on the ground, their white pages lying loose and open like the wounded and exposed stomachs of fallen soldiers. A section of wall down the path had been busted apart, large chunks of stone lying crumbling beside it. From somewhere deeper within the castle, Abby smelled fire and chaos and death, and the thought of men dying for her own foolish mistake not to go to Anor Londo sooner threatened her eyes with tears so strongly, she had to bite down on her lip til it bled to stave them off. Only girls cry.

Chester yanked at her arm, and Abby had to take hold of the bannister to keep from falling. He led her down the walkway, around a bend, and to the bottom of a long, twisting, flight of stairs that opened up to the wide chamber of the room below. From the foot of the stairs, Abby could see a balcony looking out over the gardens outside. The sky was as black as those curtains that fell over her eyelids earlier, and a blizzard of snowfall was washing across the balcony, distorting it and giving the impression that the scene outside was nothing more than some artist's smeared and unfinished painting.

They had made it halfway across the room when a familiar figure came limping out of a side passage. The Knight of Thorns, his eyelids at half- mast, his mouth curled into a wince, took two steps forward, halted and looked as if he were going to vomit, then leaned into the wall and slid to the floor.

"...Chester?" He croaked as they neared and a grin rose up his ugly face. "I'll be damned."

"What in Izalith happened to you?" Chester asked, pulling Abby to the man's side.

"Witch," he snarled, and Abby immediately knew he meant Quelana. "She must've... fire bitch must've played some witch trick on me. I don't know how she did it. Stunned me with a spell, or... something."

"Does she live?" Abby asked, though she wasn't sure why. Quelana, her friend, had abandoned her and only Quelana, the demon, remained.

Kirk looked up at her and frowned. "What are you doing with the girl?"

Chester's grip tightened on Abby's wrist, letting her know she wasn't to speak again. "Taking her... away."

"What's happened, Chester?" Kirk asked. "There's war here isn't there? You can smell it in the air. Smells like blood and death. And that rumbling in the walls... Logan had the truth of it, didn't he? Lordran... It's over, isn't it?"

Chester stared at the man. "It's over," he confirmed.

"Does Quelana live!?" Abby insisted, knowing it would anger Chester but asking anyway.

"The hell should I know," Kirk snapped. "Fire bitch was gone when I came to." He turned on Chester again with a sneer. "Solaire and his big bastard friend, Tarkus, are loose from their cells, too."

She escaped him. She lives, Abby thought, and the realization brought her a profound sense of relief. Demon or not, Abby apparently still had love in her heart for the witch that had once been her friend.

"The Archives are as good as lost, Kirk," Chester said. Kirk nodded. "Yeah... sounds like it."  
"I'm leaving."  
"As good a plan as any."

"Can you walk?"

Kirk laughed. "What? And come along to spoil your honeymoon with the pretty little Chosen there? Piss off. I'll die here fighting with the rest of the rats. Turns out, I ain't got much better to do."

Chester nodded. He extended his hand and Kirk took it. Abby watched as an unspoken conversation passed silently between their eyes, finding it strange how even men as vile as these two could kindle a friendship strong enough between one another to merit such a farewell.

"In another life," Chester said. "Aye," Kirk agreed.

With that, he rose, turned, and pulled Abby along beside him to exit the library.

In the short time it had taken them to travel through the Archives' halls and chambers to reach the garden outside, dawn had begun to creep up over the Eastern wall, casting a soft, pale yellow, light on the snows that caked the grass and trees. The cold morning air had a crispness to it, and when Abby took a deep lungful, she found the sensation seemed to open her eyes and alert her senses more than they had been in a long, long, time. Chester shoved her forward on the wooden platform outside the exit to a short ladder leading to the snows below.

"Climb," he said. "And if you try to run, I'll put a bolt in your leg."

She glared at him, but the morning light twinkled on his hip and it pulled her eyes there. His dagger was sheathed but unstrapped beside his hip, sharp and pointy and deadly, and Abby suddenly found an urge coming across her to reach for it.

"Go," he commanded so harshly, Abby found her feet and hands moving for the rungs of the ladder before she could even consider disobeying him.

The boots he'd laced upon her feet planted in the soft snows of the garden, and Abby released the ladder to stumble forward and gaze up at the wooden platform near the crest of the hill she'd been killed and resurrected upon by Logan days earlier. The crowd that had gathered around her that day was so warm and kind and hopeful and sweet to her. She realized it was the last somewhat-happy moment she'd had other than the moment Lautrec had returned to free her from the cultists. The bonfire there was unlit now, a dead, cold, husk of a pit, and Abby had to pry here eyes from the disheartening sight of the thing before it filled her heart with just as much death and cold.

Chester came beside her and took her by the elbow. "Logan had the bonfire dismantled and the fire's keeper removed," he said, pulling her down the slope of the hill and in between a towering stand of dark brown trees. "So when we get inside the cavern, don't think throwing yourself from the cliffs within will save you from me."

They marched through the heavy snows underfoot as morecame twirling from the morning sky above to litter the shoulders and hoods of their cloaks. Abby listened as Chester led her forward to the sounds outside the wall. She could hear the faint beat of a wardrum and the hissing and growling of a thousand terrible hollow, waiting to claw their way inside and skin and slaughter every human they could hunt down. It was as Lautrec said, Abby realized. Even going to them now would be unlikely to halt their rampage. She could hear the malice in their distant grumblings, and knew exactly what they wanted: absolute destruction.

"You can still go back and fight," she said as Chester guided her around a cluster of trees. "There are men like the Knight Solaire who would fight to their very end. They say the Gods reward a good death, and death in defense of the innocent is as good as-"

"If Logan taught me anything," Chester interrupted, "it's that there are no Gods. At least no justones. Piss on their reward. They can keep it."

"You're a coward," she told him. "I have no skill with sword or shield at all, but if you were to release me, I would go and fight. What does that say about you? What kind of-"

He shoved her down to the snows. Abby caught herself on her elbows and knees and turned to face him, but his hand thundered across her cheek. She collapsed to the ground, but before she could so much as catch her breath, he turned her over and slapped her again, harder.

"Open your mouth," he commanded, his face red and wrinkled with anger, and took hold of her chin. He pulled his dagger from its sheath and brought it beside her cheek; the blade shimmering in the sunlight. "I'm going to take out that sharp little tongue of yours so you can't unleash your cruelties upon me ever again."

She pressed her lips firmly together and shook her head, pleading with her eyes, when motion from the bottom of the hill caught her attention. Chester frowned and turned to follow her gaze.

There, emerging from the darkness within the cave at the base of the slope, two of Logan's golems were coming lumbering forward, their hulking bodies of blue crystal shining queerly in the morning light.

Chester's eyes widened and his grip on her chin stiffened. "What in Izalith were they doing in the caverns?"

"...please," Abby pleaded, eyeing the dagger hovering not three inches from her face.

He looked from the golems, to her, and back. They were still coming, and now it was evident by the thundering pace of their footsteps and the way their thick, boulder-like, heads were fixed forward that Chester and Abby were, in fact, their targets.

Chester cursed, punched the snows beside Abby's head, and rose. He shuffled around behind her, grabbed her wrists, and began dragging her backwards through the snows. They came to a thin tree, which Chester immediately pulled her arms around, joined them at the wrist, and wrapped tightly in his belt before buckling it, binding her in place.

"What are you doing!?" Abby cried, pulling at her arms that were now wrapped uselessly around the bark of the tree.

Chester pulled his crossbow from his back and loaded a bolt into its firing mechanism. "Logan has set his monsters upon me. Likely, for failing him by losing you," he said with a hint of contempt in his voice. "Now I'll have to kill them."

Abby looked from the approaching golems, lumbering up the hill and quickly closing the gap between them, and Chester. "But if you fail... I won't be able to escape," she pleaded, tugging once more at her arms.

He looked down at her. "Then we will be together in death."  
She held his dark eyes and, for once, found no lies held within. He meant

it. If he were to die, he intended her to follow along behind him. "Don't leave me like this..." she pleaded once more.

He stared at her, ignoring the pounding approach of the golems over his shoulder. "Say you love me..."

Abby's eyes found the twinkle of his dagger beside his hip. When she looked back to his eyes, she nodded. "I... I do. I'm very angry with you, but... I do. I love you, Chester. Please. I only want to hold you once more. If this is... our end... let it be in each other's arms. I don't want to die alone. Please don't leave me to die alone beside this tree."

He licked at his lips. "...I know you're lying."

She swallowed and made herself continue to hold his eyes. If you speak now, he will leave you, she thought. Make him believe and don't you cry. Only girls cry.

"...but, perhaps, a lie is better than nothing," he said.

He shouldered his crossbow, returned to her side, and moved to free her hands.

When her wrists came loose, Chester took them and moved them around his neck. He took hold of her waist and stared into her eyes. "We're going to die now. But... I do love you," he said, and for what it was worth, despite all his violence and anger towards her, she believed him. He leaned forward, closed his eyes, and his lips, warm and moist and full, pressed to her own.

He kissed her and she returned the kiss as the snows fell upon their heads and the wind sent their cloaks flying in a swirl around them, and for one beautiful moment that seemed taken right from one of the books of heroes and princesses she'd read as a child, she knew he did truly love her, and for that one, fleeting, moment, she almost loved him back.

Then her hand fell to his hip, ripped his dagger free from its sheath, and drove it into his shoulder.

A high-pitched whine escape his clenched teeth and his eyes opened wide on her own. "The girl has to die so the woman can live," Abby told him, and when his hand reached up to claw at her face, she twisted free of his arms and scrambled back in the snows to escape him.

Chester fell to his hands and knees and screamed such a hate-filled sound, even the approaching golems gave pause. Blood leaked from his shoulder to paint red dots beneath him. He winced and reached back to pull the thing free, but Abby had planted it, unintentionally, just out of range of his grasping hand. His eyes moved to the crossbow beside him and he lurched forward to grab it. Abby beat him there, however, and pulled the thing to her chest just as his fingers grazed its wooden handle.

"ABBY!" He wailed, and made to stand, but he must have moved his shoulder in a way that drove the blade further into his flesh, because he cried out and collapsed to the snow, his good arm taking hold of his bad one and squeezing.

She stepped backwards through the snow, her eyes flicking between Chester and the golems, who had begun their approach once more. "I'm... sorry," she told him.

"ABBYYYY!" He screamed, his dark eyes lifting to find her own and his breath coming in short, jagged, pulls. When she did not stop moving, he grit his teeth and pulled his gaze from her to look back at the golems. "Don't you leave me like this! Not without a weapon to defend myself from those... those THINGS! I WON''T DIE LIKE THIS! ABBY! DON'T YOU DO THIS TO ME!"

His screaming had halted her feet, but she would not allow them to carry her nearer to him. She shook her head. "I-I'm sorry."

The golems had reached the trees at the base of the slope. They marched forward, smacking branches from the path with relentless determination.

"ABBY!" He shouted, but the anger had fled his voice, and as if he'd pulled some sorcerer's trick, his face became that of the man who'd kissed her so long ago and had been so charming the first few days she'd spent in the Archives. She saw again the dimple of his chin and the cut of his cheekbones and his eyes carried a softness in them that his voice, when he spoke again, matched. "Abby... I love you. Please don't leave me to die to these golems. Leave me my crossbow, Abby. Please. Just my crossbow. I love you."

Her eyes lifted to the golems.

"Abby... please?" He asked, his voice nearly a whisper then.

If you leave him to die, you are no less a monster than those golems, she thought. The girl has to die so the woman can live... but the woman will not be heartless. She nodded. "Okay... alright, Chester."

He smiled as she stepped forward, leaned near, and tossed the crossbow before him to lie in the snows. He crawled on his hands and knees to retrieve it, but Abby did not intend to stick around to watch whatever battle he was going to have with the things. She pulled her eyes from the sad sight of the man clawing his way up the hill, turned, and ran off to return to Lautrec.

She'd made it less than a dozen steps when the bolt pierced her in the back.

Pain wracked her side and stomach, and when she looked to her cloak, the pointed tip of a crossbow bolt was jutting out just above the curve of her

hipbone; the thing had gone right through her back and burst its way out of her stomach, armor, and cloak. Warm blood blossomed around the wound and Abby fell to her knees, her breath caught in her chest.

She fell face first to the snow, coughing and gagging and wincing as a pain unlike any she'd ever felt rippled its way from the holes in her body down to her feet, back to the wound, and up to her head. Her trembling hands reached beneath her and when they came up, they were so sticky and covered in blood, she knew the wound would be the end of her.

She gasped for air, tasting blood at the back of her mouth, and turned to see Chester crawling his way forward, his own blood falling from his shoulder to leave a trail behind him in the snows. The golems were in pursuit behind him.

"Y-You..." Abby croaked, but when she spoke, her words seemed to drive the bolt deeper into her stomach, and so she clamped her mouth shut and closed her eyes to fight back the pain.

Chester's hand fell upon her ankle; whether he was coming to finish her or to kiss her or to simply die beside her, Abby did not know. It was Lautrec's voice that spoke in her head, Everyone wants something. Now she would pay for not listening to his words, and Chester would get what he wanted: her life.

"Abby..." Chester whispered, his hands working their way up her leg, pulling himself nearer to her. "...you little bitch..."

Her own hand worked its way back beneath her stomach, and her fingers found the bolt's shaft and wrapped around it. She tugged on it, and the pain that followed was so severe she nearly fell unconscious.

"Now you die..." Chester told her, clawing his way up to her head. "And I live on without you... will you wait for me in the next life?" And despite the horror of what he'd done and the dagger sticking out of his own shoulder, the man laughed: a sick, twisted, sound that filled the garden.

Abby braced herself, tightened a fist around the bolt protruding from her abdomen, and pulled again. It slid forward, but not enough to exit the wound. The pain bolted through her side again, shutting her eyes and clenching her teeth so hard, she thought she might shatter them.

Chester's hand fell on her cheek. "I loved you, you bitch," he said. "And you made me kill you. I loved you!"

She coughed, ignoring the agony it brought, and reached for the bolt on final, knowing that if she failed to remove it then, she would surely lose the strength to try again. Her hand found it, wrapped it, and pulled with every last bit of strength she had.

Just when it seemed as if the bolt was going to refuse to leave her again, it

jerked forward, and her hand came away gripping it tightly between blood-soaked knuckles. Chester's hand reached for her throat, and Abby spun on her side to face him.

She didn't know where the strength came from to scream, but scream she did: a thunderous, powerful, thing that sent Chester's head reeling back in retreat. She climbed atop his waist, ignoring the pain that threatened to send her mind to the dark void that awaited it, took the bolt in both hands, and drove it down into his chest.

Then she did it again. And again.  
...and again.

She wasn't just killing Chester. She was killing the foolish girl within her who had made so many mistakes. Who had cost so many innocent people their lives. Who had walked into trap after trap like some naive child. She was killing Logan for deceiving her and Patches for betraying Lautrec on the bridge that distant day in the Burg so long ago. She was killing the hollows that marched upon the castle and the demons that haunted her dreams. She was killing every foul beast that had ever harmed anyone in Lordran and she was killing the golems too. She was killing Gwyn, though she'd never seen him and now - never would.

When her arms stopped moving, Chester's eyes stared blankly into the morning sky above, snow falling on his once-comely, and now-lifeless, face.

The adrenaline gone from her body, the pain returned and Abby collapsed atop him; listening as the pounding of the golems footsteps neared.

She lifted one, trembling, hand to her face, and wiped at her cheek. There were no tears upon it. She smiled. Only girls cry, she thought, and the girl I was is dead. I only wish the woman whose taken her place could have lived a little longer... Lautrec would have been proud.

She laid her head against Chester's chest and closed her eyes. The golem's footsteps were just behind her then, and their pounding became a gentle rhythm to send her off into whatever awaited her in death. It was not Lautrec's face she saw in the darkness, though. It was Ben's.

Up to you now, she told him. I failed. I failed because I lived as a girl. ...at least I die as a woman.  
Blackness then; nothing more.

Chapter 34

"We have to go save them," he told the others.

On the distant cliffs that loomed over Anor Londo's great stone wall, the Duke's Archives were spewing dark smoke into the air so thickly and in such tight clusters, the black tendrils rising from the fires looked like some giant's fist, closing tightly around the castle to smother it between massive, ebony, fingers. The sky above the keep had grown to a queer shade of purple, and a swirling mass of snow rained chunks of ice down around it. Dawn was rising to the East, and as morning came, the faint outline of winged beasts flying in the skies around the Archive's took form. To the North, the drumming that had started the previous day banged on: aggressive and tenacious. Whatever was happening to the Duke's Archives, the end was nearly upon it; that much was now clear.

Ben turned from the doorway. "Did you not hear me? We have to go save them."

Neither Patches nor Pharis bothered to look away from the table between them, where an overturned cup housing an eight-sided die stood erect on the table's center. Patches had his dagger stuck into the table beside him, and was twirling it in a circle beneath his index finger as his tongue ran across his bottom lip and his eyes narrowed on the cup. The woman who called herself 'Pharis' was leaned back, grinning, her feet resting on the edge of the table, her hands behind her head. Her pale blue eyes moved from the cup, to Patches, and back. The grin widened.

"You gonna' call it or am I gonna' just take your wine now?" She taunted.

"Piss off, woman, I'm gonna' call it," he told her. "I call it... under. No, wait. ...yeah. Alright. Under!" He plucked the cup from the table. Beneath, the die was resting on a six. "Shit!"

Pharis laughed, clapped her hands together excitedly, and reached for his

skin of wine. He began to protest, but the woman tilted her head back and took a long swig.

"Hey! That's more than a swallow, woman!" Patches complained, leaning forward to retrieve his wineskin.

Dark red wine trickled down Pharis' chin as it came away. She swiped at her lips with the back of her sleeve and frowned. "Sore loser."

"Maybe I am," Patches admitted. "But if you take another drink like that, I'll give you something else to swallow. And it ain't gonna' be outta no wineskin, neither."

"Careful, Hyena," she told him with a wink. "I'm prone to bite things that find their way near my mouth."

"Oh, I don't mind a little pain mixed with my pleasure," he said with a shrug.

"Hey!" Ben shouted. "Did you two not hear me?" He walked beside the table and scooped the die into his fist, prompting both their eyes to rise to his. "We have to go to the Duke's Archives. I have to go. There's... something wrong. If I don't leave soon, they'll all die."

"Shut up and sit down," Pharis told him. "And put the die back on the table before my boot finds its way up your ass."

Ben narrowed his eyes on her's. "You can try," he told her. "But I'm not in ropes anymore. It won't be as easy to kick me around."

"Oh no?" She asked and moved to stand.

Ben kicked the leg of her chair, and because of the way she was sitting, threw it off balance. Pharis' arms pinwheeled, she tried to lean forward to counter the weight, but it was too late: both her and the chair she sat in crashed to the floor. The woman clambered furiously to her feet, and when she got there, pulled her dagger free and stepped forth with the weapon raised.

Patches moved to her, grabbed her wrist, and pried it free as she glared across the small room at Ben. "As amusing as it would be to watch you two kill each other," he said, spinning her around and shoving her back towards her chair. "It would greatly lower my chances of surviving if whatever's happening at the Archives starts happening here. So play nice, kids, huh?"

"Piss off, Hyena," Pharis growled, sending her glare back at Ben as she stood her fallen chair back on its legs. "The boy has been getting on my nerves lately. I say we tie him back up and leave him out in the snows til Nico and Vince get back. Let him cool off."

"Also amusing," Patches admitted, returning to his seat. "But once again, lowers my survival chances should a fight come our way."

The woman chortled. "Ain't no fight comin' here. He's full of it."

Patches glanced Ben's way, and Ben saw a look on the man's face that wanted to agree with her, but knew it couldn't. Pharis might not have been there at the Undead Asylum when Ben died and rose again from the fires to be reborn, but Patches was. He, at least, seemed to consider Ben's words. "Even if what you say is true, kid," he began, "so what if they all die? What do you care?"

Ben looked back to those distant cliffs where the Archive's continued spewing its own destruction into the skies and sighed. Why do you care? He wondered. It wasn't for Lautrec, that much he was sure of. It had been twice now that the knight had abandoned him, and the three day limit Nico had warned Lautrec of to return before he departed had come and gone and the knight never showed. Thankfully, the dragon-worshipers hadn't headed out on their pilgrimage anyway, but it was clear then that Lautrec didn't give a damn about Ben, and that was fine; he didn't give a damn about Lautrec either. Not anymore. His concerns also weren't for the witch. She'd barely spoken to him in their brief time traveling together, and she had not protested when Lautrec voted to leave him behind at Domhnall's in the Burg.

It was Abby's face that had risen from the darkness of his sleep to whisper a warning that croaked through blood-soaked lips. It's up to you now, her voice had spoken, ghostly and faint and carrying queer reverberations that echoed through his thoughts. She was either dead or dying-he could not say how he knew it, but he did-and Ben found neither possibility bothered him much. From the moment he'd put that arrow in her chest at the Undead Asylum and Lautrec had killed him for it, he'd felt a subtle pressure mounting between the two of them. They'd hardly spoken, but the competition was there, and if there had been a first round, Abby surely had won it. They all loved her. Lautrec, Quelana, even Domhnall, who he'd spent considerably more time with, seemed to worship at her stupid feet. Ben had heard him pleading with Lautrec to rescue her from Logan, telling him Abby was 'Lordran's last hope'.

And what am I? Ben had thought. Why don't any of them respect me? Why don't they believe in me!? He knew if he let thoughts like those linger in his head and poison his mind, they'd only break him, and so he kept his attention elsewhere, but now the question had risen again: Why save them? Why when they would surely not save you?

"Boy?" Patches asked. "You still with us over there?"

Ben pulled his stare from the Archives. He looked to Patches and thought, with some distant, bitter, humor, that the man was the closest thing now he had to a friend. "I don't care about Lautrec," Ben told him. "Or Abby, for

that matter. But if Lordran is to be saved, we need help. If the castle falls... everyone in it falls as well. People that... well, if Abby is dead, and I think she is, maybe one day they'd... well, maybe they'd follow me in her place."

"We follow the Path," Pharis said, sticking her finger towards him. "The Eternal Dragon will offer his salvation. We don't needno Chosen boy to save ourasses."

"Oh, shut up," he snapped. Pharis' mouth gaped incredulously, but he pressed on before she could speak. "Neither of you believe in that nonsense and I know you don't. Every time Nico or Vince starts in one of their 'prayers', I see both of you go along with it, sure, but the dedication they have? You don't share it."

Patches and Pharis shared a look, and Ben, who hadn't been a hundred percent on his accusation, at least not of the red-headed woman, breathed relief. Their expressions told the same story: he was right.

"Well we got to believe in something," Pharis said, though the confidence had left her voice.

"Believe in me!" Ben pleaded. "Patches, tell her! Tell her what you saw at the Asylum! I rose from the flames! I died and came back!"

Patches shrugged, took a sip from his wineskin, and scratched at his chin. "Well... he did do that, I s'ppose. But, kid, even if we all hauled our sorry asses up there, and there is some massive army of hollows marching on the Archives, what exactly do you think the three of us are going to do about it? Even if Nico and Vince return from the Parish with Andre and the others and you somehow talked them into it, that still puts our numbers at less than ten. Ten against an army? That's called suicide."

"Piss on them odds," Pharis added with a nod.

"I'm telling you, I can stop this. I don't know how or why but I know I can," Ben pleaded with them. "Believe in me! Patches..."

Patches avoided looking his way. The bald man took another swig of wine instead, covered up the dice on the table between Pharis and himself, and asked, "'Nother game?"

Ben's shoulders slumped. To Izalith when them too then, he thought, kicking the wall beside him and balling his hands into fists. To Izalith with all of them. They'll see. When they realize their precious little hero, Abby, had failed them, they'll see. Then they'll have to respect me. With nothing else he could do, Ben lowered himself to the floor beside the doorway, cradled his knees, and watched the smoke rise from the cliffs, wishing he was there beside them, if nothing else, just so he could have watched Abby die.

They morning grew to noon and the noon was nearly night when Nico

finally returned to them. Ben hadn't spoken a word the entire time, choosing instead to watch the Archives and do his best to stay awake. He'd nodded out twice, his head falling to his chest, but both times he'd seen horrible flashes of mutilated corpses and severed heads and blood raining from the sky alongside the snow and ice. He could not sleep, and so when Nico's large frame entered the doorway, Ben scrambled to his feet and for one, mad, moment, nearly attacked the man.

Nico frowned. "You untied him."

"No point in keepin' the kid all bound up," Patches said. "He ain't got no weapons on him."

"He is our captive," Nico reminded the bald man as he shouldered past Ben, red in the face from the exertion of his travels, and slumped his thick frame into a chair. He swiped sweat from his brow and laid his mace on the table beside him.

"Well?" Pharis asked when the sound of Nico's labored breaths quieted. "Was the boy tellin' the truth or what? What did you find at the Parish? Where's Vince?"

"Vince is coming up behind me," Nico explained. He turned to Ben and stared. "The boy told it true. We're about to have guests."

When the third day of his captivity was drawing to a close, and Ben drawing more desperate to delay being hauled off to the Great Hollow to be brought before some eternal dragon, he had done the one thing he could think of that would delay them. He'd told of Andre and Sieglinde and Domhnall's whereabouts. "Don't call me 'boy' anymore," Ben snapped. "I told you I had friends at the Parish, now you owe me something."

The fat man's frown deepened. "Owe you? You are our prisoner. Don't let the generosity of those two," he said, casting a dark look Patches and Pharis' way, "fool you, boy, or you'll be back in your ropes."

Boy, he thought, his fists clenching so tightly, his nails bled his palm. Every time he heard the word now, it was Lautrec's voice taunting him. He took a breath to calm himself. "You stand to gain nothing now by keeping me here," Ben told him. "Lautrec is gone and he's not coming back. Isn't that clear to you by now? I told you about my friends. What more do you want from me!? Let me go!"

"Go where?" Nico asked.

"There," Ben said, nodding to the horizon, to the smoke streaming into the night and the distant fires burning the castle alive like fireflies resting on a chunk of stone.

Nico laughed. "I think not, boy. Madness lies that way. Nothing more. When Vince and your 'friends' return, we will gather ourselves, pool our

information, and then we will offer them a place in the Order so that they may walk the Path true with us and accompany us to the Great Hollow. Then we will be saved. The Archives? Those are damned men now. Our brethren amongst them included."

"Rickert? Rhea? Tarkus? Laurentius?" Pharis asked, biting at her lip. "You mean... we're going to leave 'em all behind."

"We sent the knight to retrieve them," Nico said. "He either failed us or betrayed us. Either way, we did what we could. Father Eternal will watch over them in the next life if they stayed true to the Path."

"This is crap," Ben snapped, punching the table between Nico and himself. "You're keeping me here for no good reason!"

"You watch your tongue, boy," Nico said, laying his meaty hand over the hilt of his mace.

"Stop calling me boy!" Ben shouted so loudly, he saw Patches almost choke on his wine beside them. "I'm a man grown, twenty damn years old! I'm not some child to be dismissed! I'm the CHOSEN!" He rose to his feet before he could think better of it. "And you are a delusional, fat, old man who needs to get out of my damned way!"

Nico took up his mace and stood himself (with some effort). He took a step forward, his large frame towering over Ben's smaller one. "Get the ropes and tie our captive here up. He has seemed to forget his place here."

"I know my place," Ben told him. "I'm the Chosen Undead. My place is to stand before the darkness that threatens this world and deny it entrance. Your place is at my feet. Worshiping the ground I walk on."

"Heretic!" Nico snapped. He tossed the chair between them aside with such force, its wooden leg splintered off the wall it smacked against. He crossed the gap with surprising speed for his size and took hold of Ben's tunic at the chest. "Don't you speak of worship in front of me. Don't you dare speak such blasphemy in my presence, boy!"

Boy. Ben looked into Nico's eyes and found Lautrec's staring back at him; laughing at him. "Get your hands off me," he said quietly, refusing his temper to overthrow him. He reached up and grabbed the heavy hands at his tunic, trying to pry them free.

"What are you two doing? Bind him I said!" Nico growled at Patches and Pharis.

Ben heard the scraping of their chairs over his shoulder. "Let me go," Ben warned him again.  
"Quiet," Nico commanded.

"Let me go now."

"I said to be quiet, boy!"

Boy. A flame ignited in Ben's chest. It burned the air away that his lungs were gasping for making it hard to breath, hard to think, hard to see. He narrowed his vision on the fat man's fat face and saw the face of every man, woman, and witch that had disrespected him. He tightened his grip on Nico's hands so tightly his knuckles ached. He could feel his arms trembling, his legs threatening to buckle, his stomach wanting to spill the little food and drink his captors had supplied it with. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to tear Nico's eyes from his head and pour his hatred into the fat man's empty skull.

Nico's face ran white. He opened his mouth as if to shout, but only a reedy whine hissed from within. He choked, his fat jowls shaking as violently as Ben's hands, his eyes flipping back into his skull and going as white as Ben's knuckles. A trickle of blood raced from his nose and his grip fell from Ben's tunic. The fat man reeled back on his heel, sounded one last gurgle of a protest, and fell to the floor.

It didn't take a cleric to see: he was dead.

Ben stood over him, gasping for breath and staring at his corpse with his mouth agape. He pulled his eyes from the horror and saw Patches and Pharis standing beside him, staring down at Nico with wide-eyed looks of incredulity on their faces.

"I..." Ben croaked. He looked back at Nico, thinking he might have imagined the whole thing, but the fat man's motionless body and bloody nose told him otherwise. "I... I didn't mean to..." Ben managed. His stomach lost the battle that had been waging within it and he rushed for the doorway, leaned outside, and vomited into the snows. When he turned back, Patches and Pharis hadn't moved; they simply stood looking down upon Nico's corpse, not saying a word. Ben lurched his way back to them, using the wall as support, and joined their gaze. "I... I don't hat happened, I... I didn't mean to."

"But you did," Patches finally said, not removing his stare from the body.

Pharis pried her eyes away and they fell upon Ben beside her. She grimaced and recoiled as if he were a demon. She reached for her dagger and stumbled back to the corner of the room, keeping a cautious, if not terrified, eye on him. "What in Izalith are you?" She muttered. "What demonry did you cast upon him?"

"I don't know!" Ben pleaded. "I swear! I never did that, I-"

"Calm yourself, Ben," Patches said. He turned to face him and, to Ben's amazement, was actually grinning. "It looks like the girl wasn't the only Chosen to walk out of that Undead Asylum with a gift."

"Gift?" Ben echoed. He looked down at his hands: bone white, trembling, and cold as the snows he'd just vomited into. "What... gift?"

"You know I never thought it was nothin' special," Patches went on, prodding Nico's lifeless side with the toe of his boot. "Abby's little trick, that is. The power to calm a demon? So what? What good can that do us? She's not going to hug the bloody hollow into submission. But what you just did..." He stepped forward and laid a hand on Ben's shoulder. "Kid... you got the power of death in your hands. That... well, that is something I can get behind."

"What's goin' on!" Pharis screeched. Her wide eyes flicked from Ben to Patches and back. "What did he just do to Nico! What in Izalith is he!?"

Patches stared at Ben and his grin widened. "He's the Chosen. The true Chosen. Kneel before your savior, woman." Patches dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

Ben turned to Pharis. Her mouth was moving up and down, perhaps looking for some logical protest. When she, evidently, found none, she slowly lowered herself to a knee, keeping a wary eye on Ben as she did.

"Vince is going to kill me," Ben said. "I... Gods, I killed Nico."

"Aye, Vince will kill you," Patches admitted, rising once again. "If he finds out, that is."

Ben looked to him.

Patches laughed. "Maybe... well, maybe the climb up and down all them stairs and walkways was a bit much for the heart wrapped up in old Nico's lumpy chest there. Maybe it quit on him just as he was almost here."

"Lie to him?" Ben asked, shaking his head. "But... But I-"

"Murdered a man, yes," Patches said. "It is what is and what's done is done. But what I just saw, Ben, was power. A power that we can't simply throw away because of an accident. And it was an accident. I saw it. You saw it," he said, looking to Pharis.

She swallowed, nodded, but did not seem to have the courage to speak.

"And you're going to keep your big mouth shut and go along with what I say, won't you?"

Again, Pharis nodded, her eyes glancing fearfully towards Ben's.

"Well there you have it," Patches said. "Our little secret. Nico's heart gave in on him. A pity. Hee-hee."

"I didn't mean to kill him," Ben said again, something inside him telling him it was important they understood that. "I didn't know that would

happen. I just... got so angry."

"I believe you," Patches told him. "And I believe in you now. I can be your right hand man, Benjamin. We can be very good friends." He glanced to Pharis. "Her too, I s'ppose. The three of us together? Your power, my cunning, and her... well her? Wemight just be what Lordran needs to save it, don't you think?"

"Y-yes," Ben admitted. "I... I can do it."

"I know you can," Patches said. "And when it is done and Lordran comes to celebrate their Chosen hero, their true Chosen hero, the three of us will be the ones to call the shots, won't we?"

"I... guess..." Ben muttered; he had the distinct feeling he was living in some twisted dream.

"You just keep in mind that if we go to these Archives and our old buddy, Lautrec, is alive... he's going to be awfully mad with me for that whole 'throwing him off the bridge' business back in the Burg. But you and me, Ben? We're friends, aren't we? You wouldn't let him do anything nasty to your old pal, Patches, would you?"

"No," Ben answered immediately. "Lautrec can rot in Izalith for all I care."

Patches grin widened yet again. "That's good of you to say, Ben."

Pharis finally mustered the courage to rise to her feet. Her eyes darted between the two of them. "Are you... going to tell them about your... uh, gift, or whatever it is when the others come?"

"You can't," Patches answered for him. "They'll make the connection with our fat corpse of a friend here." He kicked at Nico's arm. "We have to keep this quiet. Keep it between the three of us. Just us. For now."

And they did. Vince returned a few minutes later. The man's face filled with dread upon seeing Nico's corpse. He collapsed to his knees, crawled forth, and cradles the man's head in his lap. The tears came to his plump cheeks so quickly, Ben could only stare at him thinking, I spilled those tears from your eyes. It is my fault. Patches told his story with such conviction, Ben himself almost believed it. The bald man was a very skilled liar. Vince only sobbed and kissed at Nico's brow while the tale of the false heart attack was relayed to him. Pharis kept her mouth shut as Patches instructed, but her eyes kept flicking to Ben's and squinting, as if waiting for him to burst into some other-worldly creature.

It was Sieglinde who was the first to round the corner, and the sight of the woman was the first thing he'd seen since Lautrec abandoned him that brought him some sense of peace. He rushed to the doorway and Sieglinde greeted him with a warm smile and a wrap of her big arms around his shoulders. She squeezed him and ruffled his hair. The two of

them had developed a big sister/little brother type relationship at the Parish, and it was good to rekindle it. It almost made him forget he was a murderer. Almost.

Domhnall and Andre came next and exchanged hugs with Ben as well. Ben didn't speak, couldn't speak, at least not yet, so it was Patches who did all the talking. Ben learned from their conversations that the children were being watched over by the oldest boy, and that they were safely hidden away at the Undead Parish with enough food and drink to last them a few days. He learned the three of them had come with Vince and Nico to see Ben and see if the two groups could join up. Nico had planned for them all to be a bunch of dragon-worshipers, but Patches mentioned nothing of that and Vince was too busy weeping over his fallen friend to say otherwise. Patches told them of a grand plan to ride Sen's Fortresses' winged-demon up to Anor Londo, to sweep upon the flank of the army of hollows, and to save the Chosen one: Abby.

Ben looked at him when he said it, and when Patches found a moment to return the look, he winked and the gesture was all Ben need to understand. He was using Abby, the one thing in Lordran everyone seemed to believe in, to gather their loyalty to the mission. Ben looked upon the man then, his only friend, with new respect for the Hyena's cleverness.

After a moment's discussion, he had them all agreeing to it. The seven of them were to leave on the morrow for Anor Londo; to venture out on a mad rescue mission. Ben had gotten his wish.

He looked down at Vince. The man's face was so red and stricken with grief, he was barely recognizable as he cradled the corpse Ben had created in his thick arms. Ben knew he should feel guilt or sympathy or some sadness for the man, but as he stared on, the only feeling that stirred within him was pride.

He was the Chosen, always had been, and with both Nico and Abby out of his way, it was his time to become Lordran's hero. He looked to Patches who winked and nodded. Ben returned the gesture.

The boy in me is as dead as Abby, he thought. Now the man will rise. When dawn broke the next morning, they set out for Anor Londo.

Chapter 35

The prison tower was alive with the sounds of whirring cogs and spinning pipes and metal grinding against metal, and as they neared the end of the spiraling staircase, Quelana could smell the metal too; a pungent, heavy, scent that reminded her of the lingering aroma that would follow a sword fight in Blighttown. When her bare feet pressed to the stone floor at the tower's base, Quelana rounded the pillar there with Rickert and Rhea at her side and looked to the room's center.

Logan's machine had been turned on. It loomed over the room, dominating every inch of it, and had become a swirling stack of wood and metal. Cogs spun, their grooved edges catching the edges of those around it, and spinning beside them went the bars and planks and wheels they connected with. A curved piece of brass swooped the outer rim of the machine, and as Quelana stared up at it and the thing spun faster and faster around the construction's core, it began to take on the form of a great golden circle encasing and protecting the intricate web of pieces within. Standing beneath the massive thing, the sounds she'd began hearing at the top of the room had grown almost deafening, so when Rhea tugged at the sleeve of her robe and spoke, the words were lost. Quelana stole one last glance at the machine, pried her eyes away, and led the cleric and Rickert beneath the arched passage at the room's end and through the secret bookshelf entrance that led to Logan's dungeon.

"What in Izalith is that thing!" Rickert asked when the bookshelf had been closed behind them, muffling the machine's noise and leaving them in the dark, quiet, confines of the tunnel within the tower's wall. The young man's eyes found Quelana's own in the darkness, and a flash of chagrin came upon his face. "Oh, uh, sorry. Heh. Forgot we've actually got someone from Izalith in our company."

"Crude," Rhea said with a shake of her head. "Lady Quelana, are you certain we will be safe in here? I didn't see Logan anywhere out there, but that machine... who else would have turned on such a monstrous thing? Surely he is near. Perhaps, well, he heard us coming and went into hiding? Oh, or perhaps he has set us a trap further along!? Or maybe-"

Rickert took her by the arm and started leading her forward. "Maybe we should just go see for ourselves, hm?" A look of disappointment came across Rhea's comely face, but she voiced no protest and allowed herself to be ushered forth.

Quelana turned and led them deeper down the tunnel's winding path, laying her hand against the jagged rock that was the walls and letting it be her guide in the darkness. She wasn't prepared to ignite her flame, at least not before she was certain they were not in any danger being there. "When last I saw that mad machine," she whispered over her shoulder to the followers at her heels, "it was dormant. The sorcerer had set his

golems upon it to construct it."

"What does it do?" Rhea's hushed voice questioned.

"That I do not know," Quelana admitted. "But it does seem to be picking up speed. Let us hope that when it reacheswhatever momentum is seeks... it does not bring the castle walls down around us."

To that, neither of them had a reply.

The tunnel opened to the first prison chamber. Quelana led them into the widening cave of rock and moved to the bars of the room's cell. A torch hung ensconced at her side, and in its dim glow she saw the dark figure of a body lying in a shadowed corner. It was not moving, and after a moment's watch, she realized it was not even breathing.

"Who's that?" Rickert asked.

"I believe he was a man named Griggs," Quelana answered. She could still see his face the day she'd first stumbled upon the mad dungeon. It had been dirty and emaciated and so stricken with grief and fear and helplessness behind those bars, she'd had a hard time holding the man's eyes. "He wrote a letter explaining his false imprisonment at Logan's hands," she went on. "It was him who took the fall when the mad sorcerer hunted down and executed Lordran's firekeepers. His tongue had been cut from his mouth."

Rhea grimaced beside her and put her fingers to her lips. "Poor soul..."

"Sounds like Logan to me," Rickert said. "Bastard. If I get my hands on the madman, I'll be sure to chop off more than just his tongue."

Where are you, Abby? Quelana thought. Where has Lautrec taken you? She glanced to the tunnel winding deeper in the dungeon and felt a chill take her spine. The horrors that awaited would only grow more severe as they pressed on. Quelana was turning to tell her followers as much when movement caught her eye within the cell. Her eyes snapped to the corner opposite Griggs, where the torch's light had not carried far enough to illuminate. Something was huddled up in the corner.

"Ready yourselves," Quelana told the cleric and sorcerer at her side, moved to the end of the bars, and sparked a lash of flame from her fingertips.

The prison interior came alive with a fiery glow, and Quelana saw Anastacia of Astora-Carim, she reminded herself-seated on the floor, cradling her knees in the corner. When the light hit her, she squinted and held a hand to shield herself. "D-don't burn me..." her voice pleaded, and it carried such quiet, sad, desperation, Quelana quelled her flame immediately.

"Anastacia!" Rhea shouted, taking the bars imprisoning the firekeeper in her hands. "Are you alright?"

"He's here..." Ana's soft voice replied; she hadn't moved. "My brother... He's alive and he's here."

It was Quelana's turn to grab the bars and lean forth to question her. "Did you see him, Ana? Was he with Abby? What has happened to them?"

From the darkness, a sniffle sounded. "No. I did not see anyone. Logan... he put me in here. He said I... he said I was to be my brother's prize. For... his hard work. He said Lautrec is coming for me."

"No one will harm you Ana," Rhea assured her. "Rickert, get this door open and get her out of there. Quickly!"

Rickert moved to the cell door, pulled a lockpick from within his cloak, and set about working the thin hooks of the thing inside the door's lock.

"Logan was going to reward Lautrec by letting him kill you," Quelana said, thinking on this new information and a feeling of hope stealing across her. "But you still live. That means whatever he wanted from Lautrec... Lautrec did not give him. Abby may yet still live."

"I heard him..." Ana went on in her quiet, shaky, tone. "I heard his voice outside in the tower's main chamber. I haven't heard his voice... since we were children, but I knew it was him. I knew it. Oh, Gods... my baby brother. You told me he was dead." She sobbed in the darkness.

A click popped in the cell's door and Rickert swung the thing back on its rusted hinges, grinning and taking a dramatic bow (to which Rhea quickly slapped his shoulder for). Ana whimpered, and Quelana could hear her boots scraping the rock underfoot in attempt to distance herself from the freedom that awaited.

Quelana, having heard the woman's sad tale of family death and a brother's obsessive vengeance, felt she was the only one who understood the firekeeper, and so it was her who entered the cell first. She crossed in the darkness to Ana, glancing only briefly at Griggs' corpse, and knelt beside the woman. "Ana, your brother will not hurt you. We won't allow it. There may be enough of a decent man in him yet to talk him out of this mad quest of revenge against you. If he was here before in the tower and Logan didn't give you to him, perhaps... perhaps he stands against the sorcerer. Perhaps he stand with us."

"You don't know my brother," Anastacia told her. She swiped a tear from her cheek. "He is relentless. We were barely teenagers when the other cruel boys in Carim... they teased him so fiercely when he was squiring to become a knight. He hardly slept. He trained like... like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. It was a dedication unlike any I'd ever encountered. He wanted to be a knight and he was going to be one at any

cost. The others mocked him because they didn't understand his devotion. How could they? A boy is supposed to be happy and free... not a slave to to his own ambition. And now... now it is my life he devotes himself so fervently to taking. And I... I suppose I deserve my death."

"You don't know he will kill you for certain. A man can change," Quelana said.

"A man can," Anastacia admitted. "But I killed the man my brother would have been the night I caused our family to burn in their beds. Now only the knight remains... that cold, stubborn, relentless thing my little brother desired so deeply to become as a boy. Well, become it he has. And it is coming for me."

"Quelana..." Rickert's voice called over her shoulder, and he didn't need further words for her to understand the tone: they had lingered long enough, and it was time to move.

"Come," Quelana said, finding Ana's hand in the darkness and guiding her to her feet. "The castle is under siege and golems run wild within the walls. I will protect you from them, your brother, and anything else that seeks to harm you."

"B-but..." Ana protested.

"The flames are a part of both our lives," Quelana went on. "You, a keeper of fire, and I, a childof it. My sisters and I shared a saying when we were younger. Say it with me now and let the words still your nerves. I am a strong flame, and a strong flame does not waver."

Anastacia hesitated in the dark. When her voice finally came, it was thick with sorrow, but somewhere within, Quelana heard a bit of confidence wishing to rise forth. "I am a strong flame. A strong flame does not waver."

Hand-in-hand they departed the cell. Rhea offered the firekeeper a comforting smile once outside and took her by the arm; Quelana slipping her own away with some effort to press further into the dungeon ahead.

At the next opening in the tunnel, Quelana had forgotten what the cell within housed. When she rounded the rocky corner and faced the prison, her breath turned to ice in her chest and she stumbled backwards into Rickert's arms.

"What is it!?" He whispered.

"Wolf," Quelana told him, gasping for a breath to compose herself. "A very big wolf."

The last time she'd seen the forest wolf that Laurentius had named 'Sif', the beast had doubled in size since leaving the Darkroot Garden and finding itself locked behind the bars in Logan's dungeon. Now the beast

had grown far, far, larger - so large, in fact, the barred section of tunnel that housed it could no longer contain the creature's body. Thick tufts of grey and white fur pressed between the bar's gaps, and below, massive paws nearly the size of a grown man's body were struggling to find room for themselves. The wolf's giant head was angled away from them, but upon their entrance, a single, black, eye moved their way and the fur around the beast's snout lifted into a malicious snarl. A single drop of saliva fell from the creature's mouth. It landed in the dirt below, leaving a damp circle big enough to stand in.

"Father eternal," Rhea's hushed exclamation of awe came behind her shoulder.

"Big wolf? Bit of an understatement, aye witch?" Rickert questioned, pulling Rhea closer to him and keeping his widened eyes locked warily on the bars of the cell. "That thing is-"

The wolf growled, and the sound came so deep and bassy, Quelana felt the rocks rumble beneath her feet. It's snarl grew more aggressive and the beast pawed at the dirt underfoot in attempt to maneuver itself towards them. It's sole visible eye darted between the four of them as its head pressed against the bars. The wolf drove its shoulder forward, colliding with the metal that imprisoned it. The bars did not budge, and the beast's anger only swelled further.

"If that thing gets loose..." Rhea began.

"It would be very bad for us," Rickert confirmed. "So let us hope it does not. Those bars look like they'll hold... probably."

Quelana turned away from the monster, thinking that if she held the thing's eye for one moment longer, its teeth would chew through the bars and then through her. "The children should be in the next cell. Come. I do not wish to rile this creature's anger any further."

They moved through the room, keeping their backs to the wall furthest from the beast. The wolf watched them go; its massive tail beating at the wall behind it and a steady stream of drool dripping from its barred fangs.

In the next widened section of tunnel, they came upon the children. The nine little ones that Quelana had found earlier-unlike the wolf-were just as she'd first found them: sitting on the floor of the cell, their limp heads resting upon one another's or their own chests, and their eyes rolled back, a sheet of icy blue in their place.

"Poor things!" Rhea cried as Rickert moved to the door and worked his lockpick into it. "How could any man be capable of such a horrendous act as to imprison innocent children! How dark must a heart be to go without empathy for these sweet little things?"

Quelana opened her mouth to reply, but a faint and distant noise caught

her attention. She cocked her head to the side, listening intently, and doing her best to ignore the clinks and clanks of Rickert's lockpicking.

"What is it, Quelana?" Rhea asked.  
"We need to hurry," she told the priestess. "Why?"  
"Because the golems are coming."

Both the priestess and Rickert froze in place and looked to her. For one brief moment they appeared perplexed. Then they heard what she'd heard: drumming forth from somewhere nearby, the pounding rhythms of heavy footsteps on the approach. Rickert cursed beneath his breath and went back to work opening the cell. Rhea glanced fearfully down the path they'd come before snapping her head back to the path lying yet untaken before them.

"I can't tell what side it comes from," she said.

Quelana closed her eyes to focus on the sound. A strong flame does not waver, she told herself upon finding the footsteps' source. "That's because they approach from both sides."

Rhea's eyes widened beneath her white hood. "We're trapped...?"

The cell door's handle popped and swung open. Rickert made no display of showmanship this time. He only ran a hand through his hair and reached for the catalyst at his belt.

"Get in," Quelana told them, gesturing to the cell. "Anastacia, here," she called to the firekeeper. Ana stumbled forth as if in a dream, allowed Quelana to take her hand, and was guided into the cell. Rhea followed, pulling her talisman from within her maiden's robes and instructing Ana to gather the children in a tight circle. Quelana turned on Rickert. "Lock them in. Yourself too if you feel you cannot fight."

He pulled the door shut and twisted at the handle til it clicked. "I can fight," he said, though his voice lacked its usual facetious tone and the color had ran from his face. "I can't hurl bloody fireballs out of my palm, but I can cast a spell or two." He faced Rhea. "Just hurry, Ray, alright?"

The priestess had already fallen to her knee and lowered her head reverently; her talisman clutched in her gloved hand and held to her lips as she whispered a prayer. The talisman took on a soft, golden, glow, bathing both herself, Ana, and the children in its warmth. Quelana turned from them to the tunnels. The one at their rear was empty, but when she looked to the one leading back to the wolf, a massive blue and white figure filled the passage and lowered itself to peer back at her.

"Ugly fellow, ain't he?" Rickert asked.

As if in response, the crystal golem's tree trunk arm lashed out and buried itself into the tunnel wall. The monster lumbered forth, its frame so large, its shoulders scraped at the narrow tunnel walls beside it, clawing loose dirt and rocks free to spill behind in the creature's path. Its feet pounded the earth, leaving soft craters in its wake.

Quelana darted to the tunnel's entrance, joined her hands at the wrists, and angled her palms forward. She commanded a pillar of flame to rocket forth, the dark walls coming alive in a fiery glow as the attack twisted its way down the path and into the golem. The creature dropped its shoulder and raised an arm to shield itself. Her fire beat at its hulking body, but did not halt the thing's progress. It came soldiering forward, forcing the wall of flame that lashed its shoulder to grow closer and closer until Quelana could feel her own flames heating her face and threatening to catch fire to her robes. She killed the flame, spun to face Rickert, and shouted, "Fall back!"

Rickert raised his catalyst, sent a blue bolt hurdling in the golem's direction, and spun on his heel to retreat to the next sect of tunnel, Quelana at his heels. They reached it and she took him by the sleeve to halt his footsteps. She spun to see the golem blast its way into the room with the children. The creature turned its head in their direction. The bars would slow it, but certainly not stop it should the thing desire to go after them, so Quelana took a step forward, jabbed two fingers back down the length of the hall, and whipped at the monster with a lash of searing red flame. The attack raked the golem's back, pulling its attention back towards Rickert and herself. It launched itself forward with a display of speed Quelana would not have thought possible of such a massive thing and stuck its arms out to crush her beneath them.

Rickert's arm wrapped her torso and pulled just as the ground underfoot exploded in a thundering wave of destruction; the golem's attack just narrowly missing her feet. Quelana got her footing, turned to give Rickert an appreciative nod of her head, and ushered them deeper down the path.

At the next widening chamber, she spotted the massive stone plating that formed a caged circle in the middle of the room's floor. Rickert stumbled to its edge first, and when he peered down inside it, he nearly fell back on his heels. "Gods!" He snapped. "How many monster's does Logan have down here!?"

Quelana moved to the edge herself. In the dim torchlight that reached the pit's bottom, the dragon/human crossbreed, Priscilla, could be seen, still locked in the chains that held her to the walls. Her head was angled back, a fall of snowy, white, hair draping her furry shoulders (though Quelana could not tell if the fur was the creature's own or simply a cloak) and her eyes were wide and carried profound anger within them beneath

the horned line of her brow. A horse's bit was affixed in her mouth, but the creature's fangs could be seen protruding around the edges. They looked just as menacing as the wolf's had.

Quelana pried her eyes from the pit and looked to the far end of the room, where a wooden lever rose from the ground; a line of steel and chain cut into the earth following back to the circular prison. "Distract the golem," she told Rickert as she crossed the room.

"Distract the golem!?" Rickert echoed. "Why? What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to free her."  
"Free that thing!?" Rickert snapped, pointing to the hole.

"Yes," Quelana said, wrapping her hands around the lever. "If she's locked up down there, it means she is an enemy of Logan's. The golems belong to him, and there will be more of them soon enough."

"Ah," he replied, though his eyes were still fixed warily on the pit. "Enemy of my enemy is my friend? That sort of thing?" He looked as if he were going to say more, but the tunnel entrance at his side exploded; a shower of rock and dirt raining down around them. The golem's head burrowed through the passage as the creature burst into the chamber. Rickert backpedaled, but his heel clipped the grating of Priscilla's prison and he fell back on his ass. The golem rushed him.

Quelana cooked a fireball in her palm as fast as she could, wrenched back her arm, and hurled it across the short gap. It splashed the golem's side like a drop of liquid fire, pulling the monster's head in her direction. By then, Rickert had clambered to his feet and made his way to the rear passage. He sent an arrow of magic into the golem, and when the thing turned back to him, he waved his arms. "Well come on then! Ugly bastard. Come and get it!"

The golem charged him, and Quelana caught a look of dread on the young man's face before he disappeared into the next tunnel; the creature's feet pounding behind him in pursuit. Quelana returned her focus to the lever. She got hold of it, braced herself, and pulled. As the wooden handle slowly made its way to her chest, she saw chains and metal pieces working against each other underground. The pit's lid came sliding apart, disappearing beneath the rock, and some mechanical action took over the rest of the work. Quelana released the lever and moved to the hole just as the white tip of the crossbreed's hair came rising from within.

The woman-creature's eyes broke the surface, and Quelana saw they were emerald green, like her own, and there was a softness in them that betrayed the thing's snarling fangs and creased brow. The crossbreed rose further still, and Quelana spotted a beautiful silver and gold choker around her slender neck, inlaid with gems and crystals that sparkled in the torchlight. The cream-colored fur that covered her shoulders and

chest might have once been a cloak, but it was hugging her frame so tightly, perhaps it had become part of her. Her hands were those of a simple woman's: no claws protruding from the tips; no hooves or scales. Her cloak ended in a cascade of furry layers around her pale legs. Beneath, her feet were bare and also without claws. Something half- buried in the dirt shined beside them.

She is no giant, Quelana thought, examining the exotic creature chained before her. She'd heard her pupils talk of a beast that stood fifteen feet high, but if it those legends once held truth, they certainly did not anymore. The creature was, perhaps, seven feet; not much bigger than Black Iron Tarkus.

A strong flame does not waver. Quelana made herself step forward until she was nearly swallowed in the crossbreed's shadow. The woman-beast stared down at her, her emerald eyes narrowed shrewdly, her pointed fangs working at the bit that silenced her. Quelana raised her arm to allow her cloak to fall from her wrist. She commanded her flames to snap at the air between them. "I mean you no harm, creature, but I assure you I can harm you. Lower yourself to me and I'll remove that muzzle from your mouth."

Priscilla's gaze held on Quelana's hand, the thing's eyes widening with, perhaps, curiosity, before she lowered her head. Quelana reached around behind the woman, digging her hands beneath the soft layers of her hair and finding the bit's straps. She worked them loose and gently pried the bar from the creature's mouth. Priscilla's face was soft-featured, almost childlike, but an anger stole across it then that robbed it of its innocence. "That thing has kept my suffering in silence for longer than I can remember," she said, and Quelana was surprised at how soft and tender the creature's voice was. "Thou hast my gratitude, but... may I asketh of you... you are no woman, are you?"

"No," Quelana told her.

"Flames rising from flesh..." Priscilla went on, her eyes moving to Quelana's hand again. "Thou art a daughter of the Great Witch Izalith!"

"Yes."

"Gods be good!" Priscilla cheered. "I beg of thee, witch, release me from my chains! Release me so that I may set forth and destroy the great plague of Lordran!"

Quelana's brow lifted. "You know of the hollows?"  
"Hollows? No, kind witch. I speak of the humans."  
"Humans?" Quelana echoed.  
Priscilla nodded. "Those that share their origins with the vile man who

imprisoned me in the first place. The evil and mad sorcerer. Thou hast taken my blood... and thou hast kept me locked away in this hole for..." Her voice cracked and Quelana thought the creature might actually spill tears from its eyes. Priscilla took a breath, however, composed herself, and went on. "Release me, witch. I begeth of thee."

"Logan," Quelana said. "Logan did this to you. Not all humans share his madness or his cruelty."

"Yet all humans carry within them the desire to be just as cruel and mad."

"And there are many of those who fight that desire," Quelana went on. "That is what makes humans so special. They choose." She had thought of it much in her time in Blighttown. Her thoughts had been not dissimilar from the crossbreed's at first, but as time passed and her pupils came and went, Quelana came to reserve a place in her heart for the beings; at least the descent ones among them. "Listen to me. If I release you, you must swear to me you will not strike out against the humans I am in the company of. They are... friends."

Somewhere from the direction Rickert had led the golem, the sound of stone cracking boomed and the rock walls of the chamber shook. Priscilla craned her neck back to glance over her shoulder. When her eyes returned to Quelana's, there was anger within them once again. "Thou needeth my help. Free me and thou shall have it."

"Swear it," Quelana insisted, taking the crossbreed's shackled wrist in her hands and laying her fingers beneath the release mechanism. "Swear you will not hurt them or I'll send you back into your hole."

Priscilla's fangs chewed gently on her lip as she mulled the proposition over. "Alright, Daughter of Chaos. I swear it."

Quelana popped the manacle loose.

Rickert came barreling back into the chamber and Quelana saw he carried in his hands now only half the catalyst he'd left with. The young man came skidding to halt in the dirt underfoot upon glimpsing Priscilla towering over him. The crossbreed snarled at him and Rickert stumbled back.

"You swore to me," Quelana reminded her.

Priscilla took a breath to calm herself. "Thou speak it true. What would thou have me do?"

Quelana knelt, brushed her hand across the dirt floor, and uncovered the shining item beneath that had caught her attention earlier. It was the hooked and curved blade of a great scythe, the handle of which ran the entire length of the pit. Priscilla spotted it too then and reached for the weapon immediately. "He left it here..." She whispered, turning the

scythe over in her hands. "Because he thought it was part of me. Thought it... would bestow him with more of my life's essence." She looked to Quelana. "Would thou have me use it?"

Quelana nodded. "There," she said, pointing to the hulking form of the crystal golem as it shouldered its way down the tunnel towards them. "Destroy that thing. It is Logan's creature."

"Logan..." Priscilla whispered, the word thick with contempt. She raised the scythe and stepped forward to block the path of the approaching monster. When it neared, the crossbreed roared: a sound that was, appropriately, both human and inhuman; a woman's shout and a dragon's growl coalescing to one, terrifying, warcry. The golem slowed, so Priscilla moved to meet it. She dashed forth, scythe raised high above her fall of snowy hair, and brought the blade down atop the monster with another roar.

Its arm fell away from its body, the scythe slicing it cleanly free. The creature had only a brief moment to look at its disfigurement: its head came off next. The chunk of crystal slapped the wall beside it, fell to the ground, and rolled to a halt near the crossbreed's feet. Its body collapsed shortly after.

"Gods..." Rickert muttered.

Priscilla spun furiously on him, scythe raised to her shoulder.

Quelana stepped between them and ignited her flame.

Priscilla's eyes fell to her's, and Quelana watched some of the hate slowly drain from them. "As thou commands," she said, lowering the scythe.

"Come," Quelana said. "There are others we must yet protect."

When they returned to the previous chamber, the children had not yet been freed from whatever spell enslaved their minds. Rhea was fallen on the floor of the cell, Anastacia at her side keeping hold of the priestess to prevent her from collapsing entirely.

"Ray!" Rickert shouted.

"She is okay," Ana told him. "Only exhausted. She has tried four different miracles. None of them had any effect on the children. She thinks-" Ana stopped speaking and her eyes drifted over Quelana's shoulders. Her mouth fell agape.

Priscilla's towering shadow fell to the floor of the cell. Quelana didn't bother turning around. "This is Priscilla. She won't harm us. Rhea, how many more miracles do you have prepared to try?"

Rhea, still too winded to speak apparently, lifted a shaky hand above her

and held two fingers in the air.

"Alright. Try them as soon as you are able."

"Quelana," Rickert called to her, and when she looked, found him staring down the tunnel across from them where two new golems had appeared huddled together in the passage.

Quelana glanced back at Priscilla. The crossbreed nodded her comprehension, took up her scythe, and moved to block their advance. Rickert shuffled out of her way, keeping a wary eye on the edge of the scythe's blade. Her seven-foot figure filled the tunnel, and a fury tail the same cream color as her cloak lashed out behind the crossbreed as she stalked forth.

thump - thump -thump

Quelana looked to the other tunnel. Three more golems were lumbering down the path, shoulders dragging alongside the walls and kicking up a cloud of dirt around them.

"Why!?" Rickert shouted. "Why are they all converging on us now? Why here?"

"Perhaps they seek to protect Logan's machine," Quelana suggested, moving to the tunnel and preparing her flame to intercept the golems' charge.

"We're not pissing around with his damn machine, though," Rickert said, slamming his body to the wall across from her and peeking around it.

Behind them, Priscilla cried out. This time, the sound did not carry the anger and power her roar had earlier. It carried only pain. Quelana turned to see the crossbreed had slashed into one of the golems' chests, but the blade had caught halfway through and gotten stuck. The hybrid was backpedaling in retreat, twisting at the long handle of her scythe to try and wrestle it loose as the creatures moved in to swarm her.

"They're coming," Rickert said, pulling her focus back to the three creatures barreling down the tunnel at them.

Quelana cupped her hand at her waist and commanded a swirl of flame to begin cooking into a marble; one that would grow and swell until it became a great chaos fireball: her most devastating spell. The golems, perhaps sensing a moment of weakness, picked up their pace. Their footsteps were pounding the ground in such quick rhythm, it was as if the walls themselves had come alive to bury them in its belly. Behind her shoulder, she heard Priscilla cry out again as something rumbled and cracked. She held her focus on the fire in her hand, commanding it to gather heat and energy, and when the first golem neared, she swung out to the tunnel and drove her hand forward.

The attack smothered the creature in a smoldering fist of death; a vibrant pool of searing lava bubbling up beneath the thing's feet. It drummed its arms wildly into the walls at its side, but by then the lava had cooked the bottom of its legs clean away. The golem shrunk again when its knees melted. Then again as it became simply a torso, then a chest, and finally - only a head.

Then that too was lost in the pool of orange chaos.

The other golems watched the attack simmer, holding their ground cautiously.

"The lava won't last long," Quelana said. "And I can't do that again. Not for a good while."

"The dragon-woman, er, thing is losing ground quick," Rickert said. "She's got no weapon."

Quelana looked over her shoulder and saw he had the right of it: Priscilla was backed up nearly to the chamber again. Her eyes met Rickert's across the gap between them.

He sighed. "It's over..."

The lava residue of her spell faded into the earth. The golems pressed their attack.

Quelana closed her eyes and searched within herself. Her inner flame was still recovering from her expenditure of energy. "Open the cell," she told Rickert. "We'll make our last stand within it." He nodded, rushed across the room to the cell, and she joined him. "Priscilla!" She called to the crossbreed. "Come! Quickly!"

Priscilla leapt back on her heels as one of the golems took a swing at her. She twisted around in the tunnel-arduously, due to her size-and scurried back to join them as the golem's second attack shattered apart the wall. Rickert worked the cell door open and the three of them poured inside. He spun back, slammed it shut, and poked his arm through the bars to twist the handle and lock them in just as the four golems converged through the tunnels at either end of the room.

"I only wanted to see his face once more," Anastacia said, her eyes flicking hopelessly between the monsters that stalked forth from the darkness. "My little brother... I wanted to see the face he'd grown into." Her lip quivered and her eyes grew rheumy.

"A strong flame does not waver," Quelana told her, seating herself beside the firekeeper and taking her hand. "Say it, Anastacia. Say it now," she told her, though whether she wanted to hear the words for Ana's benefit or her own, she could not say.

"A s-strong flame..." Ana managed before breaking into a sob.

"Ray," Rickert whispered, kneeling beside the priestess and laying his hand on her shoulder. "Ray, I'm a fool for not telling you sooner." He looked to the golems, their bodies now chocked the front of the cell so thickly, the torchlight ensconced behind them was lost in a blanket of darkness. "I love you, Ray. You're far too pretty and sweet for a failed blacksmith and a half-assed sorcerer like myself, but... I love you anyway."

If the cleric heard his confession, she showed no response. Her eyes were closed and her talisman was still at her lips as she whispered a prayer in quiet determination. Please, Quelana could hear escape her lips every now and again. Please.

Priscilla backed into the corner, raised her lips to reveal barred fangs, and growled like a cat trying to fend off a predator.

The golems cluttered around the cell. The one nearest to the center threw its massive arm forward and smashed one of the bars keeping them at bay. The iron thing bowed and bent but did not break, and so the monster swung again, and this time, the creature at its side joined in. The bar caved in further. The two golems at the ends began throwing their shoulders forward, slamming the bars repeatedly, making more and more progress towards destroying the things entirely. Two bars near the center had bowed outwards far enough for one of the things to get its arm through. It started violently thrashing its elbow back and forth, splitting them apart further and further, and growing closer and closer to clawing its way in.

Quelana mustered up enough energy to send a shot of flame at the monsters, but the attack was weak and did next to nothing to slow their assault.

"Ray!" Rickert shouted, shaking the woman's shoulder. "Don't let me die without knowing how you feel!"

"S-strong f-flames d-don't..." Anastacia croaked, swiping at her cheeks.  
A bar snapped. The middle golem clambered through.  
The others flooded the hole to join it.  
Their shadows drowned them all, their arms lifted over their heads, they- -froze.

Quelana's heart seemed frozen with them. Her hand was cupped into a ball, but no flame was coming. Beside her, Anastacia had an iron grip on her arm. Priscilla's growl had gone silent in her corner. Rickert was hunched protectively over Rhea, and Rhea-

"Rhea!" Quelana shouted.

A tear rolled the cleric's cheek. Her eyes were opened. A hand, small and tender not her own, reached to her face and wiped at it. A child rose to stand at eye level with her. Then another, and another, and another.

"Mom? Where's Mom?" One of them croaked. "What's going on... Dad!?" Another joined in.

One by one, Quelana watched as all nine of them rose around the priestess like blooming flowers, and as the children rose, the golems fell.

Their massive bodies lumbered over like fallen trees atop one another, sending a row of heavy thumps back towards the bars, and when the final thump sounded against the earth, Quelana knew: the crystal golems were no more.

"Logan..." Quelana said, understanding dawning upon her. "He must have... must have found some way to link the children's souls to the golems'. The spell... it was keeping them comatose so he could work the creatures like puppets through the children."

Rhea's joy lined ever inch of her face as she looked from child to child. "They're okay," she said, swiping at a tear. "They're... they're fine!"

"Because of your miracle," Rickert pointed out. "Me? I knew you had it. Never doubted you for a second." When Rhea turned her smile on him he sighed. "Well... maybe just for one second there."

They cleared out. Rhea soothed the crying children with another miracle while Rickert rounded up the older, braver, ones. When the nine had been joined, Anastacia led them climbing out over the fallen golems. To Quelana's amazement, the children made a game of it, laughing and slapping at the dead monsters that had nearly ended them all as they climbed. Quelana followed behind them, and Priscilla came trailing along last. Rhea was readying to lead them back to her hidden path so they could join the rest of the castle in defense when Priscilla halted them.

"Would thou allow me to speak with the witch alone?" She asked.

Rickert, Rhea, and Anastacia looked to Quelana, who gave them a nod. They returned it and led the children forward, disappearing around the bend in the tunnel.

When they were alone, Priscilla lowered herself to a knee so their eyes were more evenly matched. "What is happening above?"

"War," Quelana told her. "An army of hollow soldiers march from Anor Londo. They mean to destroy us."

The crossbreed nodded. "I will not fight alongside humans," she confessed. "When I find open sky, I will flee."

"Open sky? How-"

Behind the crossbreed's shoulders, her snow hair lifted and began breaking apart. A pair of white and leathery wings spread from beneath the massive fall of fur that cloaked her back.

"Wings?" Quelana said, a feeling of awe stirring in the pit of her stomach. "You can fly?"

Priscilla nodded. "I can and I am. I have no love for humans, witch of Izalith. I despise the half of me that shares blood with them. I will leave this place."

Quelana nodded. "I... understand, I suppose. If you take these tunnels back that way, they will spill out to the gardens and the Crystal Caves beyond. You can escape without risking a single foe spotting you. I... we will miss having an ally as powerful as yourself, but your life is not mine to command."

"This is good, but, witch, I am not telling you this for no reason," Priscilla went on. "I have some strength left in me. I can take you with me."

"Me?" Quelana questioned. "I-"

"Have no place here," Priscilla interjected. "These are not your kind. They are humans. They are savage. And even if they count you as one amongst them now, it will not be long before they seek to destroy or enslave you, as humans do with all things they fear or do not understand."

"What did Logan do to you to set such a burning hatred in your heart for mankind?"

The crossbreed growled and lifted her arm. It was heavily bandaged and spotted with dry, red, patches. "The man took my blood. He drank it before me as I stood chained as his prisoner. He mixed it with his own blood, with potions, with powders. He consumed it in every way he could. And every time he did so... he made me watch."

Quelana grimaced. "Why would any man do such a thing?"

"The sorcerer has grown obsessed with the notion of immortality. While I was chained and silenced for countless days as his prisoner, I was forced to his mad ramblings. He would read for hours and then launch into conversations with himself. He believes he can become part dragon by consuming my blood. He seeks the dragon's immortality for himself."

"That's ridiculous."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. I know he spend many hours plotting to steal my father's crystal for himself."

"Your father?" Quelana questioned.

"Most know him as Seath the Scaleless, betrayer of dragons," Priscilla explained. "He was stripped of his scales for what he did to his kind, yet even without their power, he found immortality... in the form of the Primordial Crystal. The very crystal that the mad sorcerer, Logan, now possesses."

Quelana rubbed at her cheek, mulling over the crossbreed's tale. "So with dragon's blood and the crystal in his possession... you think it may actually be possible he's found a way to make himself an immortal?"

"Who knows what madness lies in a man's heart," Priscilla said with a grimace. "Man is a plague. A plague that stops at nothing till it gets what it wants. Please, witch. You did me a great kindness. Come with me. Fly free from this place and I will take you anywhere you desire."

The swamps of Blighttown flashed before her mind's eye. When Lautrec had come and stolen her away from her home in ropes, she'd wanted nothing more in the first few days of her captivity then to return. It was safe in Blighttown. It was quiet. She knew every inch of it; loved every inch of it.

"Leave the humans to die," Priscilla pleaded. "They've earned their fate! This is the Gods' judgement upon them for their wickedness. Don't punish yourself alongside them."

"The Chosen..." Quelana said. "The Chosen Undead. She's here. Abby, her name is. She's young, brown hair cut short, a pretty face and pretty blue eyes. She is... a sweet thing, but... her mind has been tampered with. Still, she is a hope. Perhaps the only hope this world has to go on."

Priscilla did not look impressed. "What more is a Chosen then another man or woman with some fancy gift to rise from flame? They are just as cruel and greedy as the rest of their kind. Lordran does not need a Chosen hero. It needs to be cleansed."

Quelana squinted. "You're talking about the end of humanity."

"And the beginning of a new age in Lordran, free from those monsters!" Priscilla pleaded. "I'm leaving, witch. Come with me. I won't ask you again."

Quelana turned to the tunnel the others had disappeared through. She thought of Abby, but Abby was no friend of her's any longer. Whatever happened to her mind turned the girl against her. As much sadness as it brought upon her heart, it was true. She thought of Lautrec and Anastacia, but their situation was so mad and tragic, it could only end in misery for

both of them. She thought of Laurentius and Tarkus and Rickert and Rhea. They had befriended her quickly enough, but they were dragon- worshipers. They'd march her off to the Great Hollow to be judged by some eternal beast below should they somehow survive the hollow's siege. She thought of Solaire and the way he'd cast lightning from his bare hand as she cast flame from her own. The knight, for whatever reason, felt important to her.

"Quelana," Priscilla's voice cut into her thoughts, and when she looked, the crossbreed had her hand extended. "Leave them to their fate. Leave them and live."

The word 'leave' is so much prettier than the word 'abandon', she thought. But they mean the same thing. I abandoned my sisters and my mother to the chaos that took them and I carry the regret of it every day.

She glanced back at the tunnel once more. Distantly, she could hear shouting and rumbling: the sounds of war stealing across the castle more and more with every passing moment. Those left alive would almost certainly fight and die within the keep, that much was now clear, but they would die as warriors, courageous and brave and true. There seemed to be only one question left worth asking herself: Does your heart still hold enough love for the humans to die amongst them; as one of them. Do you believe in them?

She thought on it, and when she found the answer, she made her decision.

Chapter 36

His arm was burned, but not so badly it could not hold a weapon. The injuries he'd sustained in his leg and shoulder back at the Burg had reawakened with a vengeance, but not so severely that he could not stand. His lungs were filled with enough smoke to send him into a fit of coughs if he pulled too deep a breath, but not enough to stop him from breathing all together. A spray of rocks had imbedded themselves in his knuckles and forearm, but he'd picked out the worst of them and the rest he could live with. His head pounded, his vision blurred at the edges, and his hearing, though it had started to recover, was muted and dull. Overall, Lautrec assessed his state of health post-explosion as 'good enough'.

"Well?" Tarkus' deep voice boomed beside him, and even the sound of that felt as if it were coming from some distant world, or perhaps some other life. "Can you fight or not?"

Lautrec rose from the blankets the cleric had laid him upon, wincing as his knee screamed in agony. He stuck his hand out, and when Tarkus' brow furrowed, croaked, "Give me a weapon and we'll find out."

The big man grinned. "That's what I wanted to hear." He pulled a shortsword from a bracket at his rear and laid it in Lautrec's opened palm.

Lautrec glanced to the blanket at his feet, where his shotels laid broken, bent, and useless. Only a hint of sadness took him when he realized he'd never wield the things again, then his attention was on the sword. He cut the air before him, taking note of the blades weight and balance. Tarkus made to hand him a shield, but Lautrec waved it off. "I'd rather have a second sword in my off hand."

"There's a reason men don't dual-wield swords like your shotels there," Tarkus told him, "They're too long. You'd have to rebalance your footing after every swing. What you need is a shield."

"What I need is the head of the man who detonated those firebombs early and nearly ended my damn life," Lautrec corrected him. "But, I suppose, this sword and a parrying dagger will do. For now."

Tarkus frowned. "I can get you a dagger, but... you truly refuse a shield?" "I'm a knight of Carim. We don't use shields."  
"Sounds like you 'knights of Carim' have a deathwish then."

"And perhaps we do," Lautrec admitted. "But it makes our approach in battle fierce and relentless. If we don't die, we certainly kill anything left in our path."

"If that wall comes down like Solaire thinks it will, soon enough there will

be a whole lotof hollows in your path, knight. What say you to that?"

Lautec shrugged. "I say let them come." He lifted the blade and twisted it so the torchlight caught in its steel reflection. He wasn't thrilled at the prospect of fighting off an army of hollows, but it now appeared-with nowhere left to retreat to-it was them or him that would be destroyed, and if that was the case, he intended to make damn sureit was them. "Let them come... and they will die."

Tarkus handed him a dagger and fixed him with a steely look. "On that, knight, we agree."

The Great Hall that had been so empty and lifeless when he'd crossed it earlier with Abby in tow was now brimming with activity. What was left of the soldiers from the wall were scurrying about, taking up arms, mending broken ones, and piecing together armor from the wounded or dead for themselves. At the rear passage the big man in black armor who'd named himself 'Tarkus' had returned to funnel the last of the women and old men out to join the others in whatever hold they'd made for themselves. Beside him, a group of archers were frantically digging through a mound of quivers to fish out any arrows that could be salvaged. At the longtables that split the room in halves, men stood in lines, shoulder-to-shoulder, shouting at one another, about what, Lautrec did not know. A spearman with a crop of blond hair threw his arms up and marched away from the table, and Lautrec saw the other men there curse him and throw obscene gestures at his back. A group of women, led by the stout little thing Lautrec had nearly lost his life for going back to save on the wall, were huddled in the corner, casting wary glances around the hall and talking amongst themselves. The hall's sole cleric was being rushed from place to place by different men, each in turn looking to see the man's miracles soothe their friends wounds before the next.

At the wall opposite him, the Warrior of the Sun, Solaire, had regained consciousness. The knight was seated on a bench as the cleric was pulled beside him and tended to his wounds. His eyes lifted to Lautrec's own and held, squinting with, perhaps, some vague remembrance of their conversation atop the wall; the one they'd had just before Lautrec had knocked him unconscious. Let's see just how much you remember, friend, Lautrec thought, holding the man's stare. And if it's too much, I suppose we'll see which of us is the better warrior.

He limped forward, shouldering past an arguing couple and giving a wide berth to the rather angry-looking men at the longtable whose eyes alsoheld on him. He made his way down the length of the hall to stand before Solaire, who had watched his approach and now rose himself.

A quiet moment passed between the two knights as they surveyed one another; only the distant rumblings of the relentless siege of hollows quaking both above and below as they stared. Lautrec broke the silence. "Tarkus says you think they're going to batter down the walls."

Solaire nodded. "That's right."

He doesn't remember, Lautrec thought with some sense of relief. He wasn't particularly looking forward to combating the man. "I suppose you have command here...?"

"I do," Solaire said.

"Then I must request your permission to leave."

Solaire raised a brow. "Leave? There's nowhere to leave to. The castle is surrounded, the entrances destroyed or buried in rubble. And we need all the capable men we have to defend this hall should the hollows break through. You look capable enough, though I'm told you sustained injuries when they detonated the firebombs." He took a breath, his eyes flicking across Lautrec's body. "And... I suppose you have my gratitude, Lautrec of Carim. Tarkus told me it was you who came upon me when I fell to the hollows and that... that you risked your own life to save Winnie over there."

Saving her life was not my intention, Lautrec thought, but held his tongue on the matter. "I ask leave not to flee the caslte, but to search it. Abby was taken by the crossbowmen, Chester. I need to find her."

"Chester?" Solaire questioned, his look darkening. "If the poor girl is back with that vile man, she is as good as lost. He knows this castle better than anyone. It's likely he's taken her and hidden the two of them away." He grimaced. "I wouldn't put it past a man like that to hide until the fighting is done with so he can come crawling out to pick through the pockets of the dead."

"It was Abby who sent me to save your life," Lautrec told him. "You owe her. Send a scouting party out to search the-"

"That I cannot do, Sir," Solaire interrupted. "My priority, our priority, must be to defend the Great Hall. If it falls, we all fall with it, and Abby will be lost anyway. No. Stay and fight. If we live, we'll find her."

The wooden doors that closed off the hall's side passage burst open to their left. Both Lautrec and Solaire turned to see two soldiers marching forth; in between them was the Knight of Thorns, shackled at the wrists. Kirk did not look in great shape, his mouth bloody and his eyes darkened around the rims, but there was a sardonic smirk on the knight's ugly face anyway as the soldiers thrust him forward to his knees before Solaire.

"We caught the bastard, Solaire," the younger soldier said. "Like you ordered."

"Aye," the older one added. "He was sneakin' around in the mess hall." "Just looking for some food, friends," Kirk explained with a chuckle.

Solaire pulled a sword from the sheath at his hip, and Lautrec's brow lifted upon seeing it was Kirk's own barbed blade he held. Solaire laid it upon the man's shoulder before him and fixed Kirk with a stoic look. "Knight of Thorns, I charge you with the murder of Siegmeyer of Catarina, amongst other atrocities I've witnessed you commit, and I therefore sentence you to death."

The smirk never left Kirk's face. "Piss off, Solaire. I should have murdered you that night in the cave. Go 'head 'n kill me. My ghost will come back to wrap your neck in barbs while you sleep and I'll piss down your throat. Ha!"

Solaire nodded, seemingly refusing to let the man's words reach his anger, and wrenched back the sword.

"Wait," Lautrec said, and both Solaire and Kirk looked to him. Kirk, perhaps noticing him for the first time, furrowed his brow. "This man killed Siegmeyer?"

"Aye," Solaire said. "I bore witness to the malicious act myself. It was unprovoked and in cold blood. He is truly a treacherous craven, this one."

Lautrec looked to Kirk. "I request this man's life," he said.

Kirk laughed. "Ha! Looks like the knight of Carim knows talent when he sees it! Smart man, Lautrec. Keep me around and I can kill hollow just as good as any man you've got."

"Why in Lordran would you wish to save this man's life?" Solaire questioned, the sword still held ominously before Kirk's throat, waiting to execute the man.

"There are few things I believe in," Lautrec explained. "One of them is vengeance. This man's life belongs to another. If we live through this madness, I'd see that vengeance is served." Both Solaire and Kirk looked uncertain of what meaning his words carried, so Lautrec went on. "You said it yourself. I saved your life on the wall. In return, I want his. For now."

Solaire narrowed his eyes shrewdly upon Lautrec, turned the look on Kirk, and finally, lowered the blade. "You'd best not make me regret this, knight of Carim."

Kirk's mirthless laughter filled the hall. "Oh, ain't this grand? I may yet get my chance to take your miserable life, Solaire." He turned on Lautrec. "And you have my thanks, friend."

Lautrec ignored him, looking to the soldiers at his sides instead. "Keep the shackles on him and don't let him out of your sight."

The men looked to Solaire, who nodded his acquiescence, and dragged

the Knight of Thorns off to the opposite end of the hall. When they were alone again, Solaire faced Lautrec and shook his head. "I hope you know what you're doing."

As do I. Lautrec's eyes swept the room, holding only briefly on each pocket of soldiers and archers that remained. "This is a sorry lot left to defend the castle. Half of them bicker amongst each other, the other half look as if they've already lost. What do-"

"Solaire!" Tarkus' call boomed across the length of the room.

The Knight of Sunlight's eyes moved to Lautrec's, and the message housed within them was clear enough. Lautrec was to follow. He did.

Tarkus had positioned himself outside the Great Hall's main entrance, leaned against a towering slab of grey stone that made up the castle's outer wall. The big man's head was pressed to the stone, his meaty hands laid beside it, propping him up. As Lautrec and Solaire approached, he held a finger to his lips and his bushy brow lowered in focus. "I hear them," he whispered. "Come. Listen."

Lautrec moved beside him and pressed his ear to the stone as well. The three stood like that in silence, and just when Lautrec was ready to dismiss the man's claim as paranoia, he heard it: somewhere, perhaps just beyond the wall, something pounded, as if a giant's hands had clapped together. "What in Izalith..." he muttered.

Solaire nodded. "They mean to shatter the wall."

"Impossible," said Lautrec.

"Who knows what the hollows have with them," Tarkus corrected. "If they have beasts that can fly and drop firebombs on our heads from the skies, it is not unlikely they have something more that can smash stone to bits."

The pound slammed again, and this time, Lautrec could feel the castle tremble in the aftermath.

"The wall is at least two meters thick," Tarkus went on. "It won't be easy to get through, but its far from impossible."

"Praise the Sun..." Solaire muttered.

When the third slam came, bringing with it a light dusting of loosened rock from the upper corners of the wall, Lautrec's doubt had been removed. He spun on Solaire. "Set up a perimeter. This man has the right of it. ...they're coming."

Iron and leather clad soldiers marched forth through the Great Hall's wide and opened double doors once Solaire gave the command. The dejected looks Lautrec had spotted on many of their faces earlier had

vanished; replaced with expressions of fear and anxiety. They came funneling out of the doors in a long stream that finally tapered off with the group of women and the archers, who still were busy packing their quivers full as they stumbled forth. Solaire moved about the room, pointing out places to fortify. He put lines of spear-wielding men in a row around the room's rear pillars and situated the archers on the raised stone that flanked them. Lautrec watched the Knight of Sunlight, nodding his approval. Solaire was making all the moves he would have made himself, had he become a general instead of... an assassin. Ana, he thought, his eyes scanning the room. Where are you?

As the pounding at the wall grew louder and more frequent, the soldiers had all been positioned; Solaire taking point with Tarkus and looking over his strategic lines of swordsmen and spearmen and archers, making final adjustments here and there, pulling a weaker archer from the front of the pack and switching him with a more seasoned one, removing a man's blunted sword to fish a sharper thing from the-now emptied-weapon bracket. As he rounded the last leg of the room, two more newcomers joined them. Lautrec felt a stab of rage in his chest upon seeing the first, a woman in white, but when his eyes found her face beneath her hood, the rage faded: it was not Anastacia. He recognized the woman as Rhea of Thorolund, a priestess in the Covenant of White, and at her side was, he believed, the blacksmith from the New Londo Ruins, Rickert of Vinheim.

The two rushed past Solaire and right up to Tarkus. The big man spun on them and a cheerful shout escaped his black iron helm as he bent to scoop the priestess up in a hug. She looked almost comical in his massive arms. Rickert grinned and clapped Tarkus on the shoulder, and the three of them began exchanging words. Lautrec's eyes drifted back to the passage they'd come from, but after a while, realized no one else was coming.

Where are you? He asked again. The entirety of the castle seemed gathered together now, those that were still alive, but several still went missing. Abby and Chester, Quelana, and (laughing, crying, begging) her.

Rhea's eyes found his and she narrowed them cautiously before leaning to Tarkus and whispering. Lautrec could only watch from his vantage point across the chamber as Tarkus looked his way and had his helm filled with whatever tale the priestess was spinning. Rickert took up a catalyst from his belt and kept a vigilant eye cast his way as well. After a moment, movement caught in his periphery, and Lautrec turned to see the final person enter the hall as Solaire commanded the doors shut and barred.

There was flame in the figure's hand, and for a moment, he thought it was Quelana. For whatever reason, the thought brought him hope. Then the hooded man rounded into the hall fully, and he saw it was only the pyromancer, Laurentius, as the man went and gathered himself with Tarkus and the other's in the middle of the chamber.

Lautrec looked from them to Solaire, and he found the Knight of Sunlight

housed the same shrewd expression Lautrec likely wore himself. It told him that neither of them were part of whatever little group the four of them had. That was good, because Lautrec didn't care for the way they kept casting their eyes his way and whispering amongst each other. If they stand between Ana and I, he thought. Then I'll kill them too.

It was Tarkus who approached him, breaking away from the group to lurch across the hall, and Lautrec noted the man's greatsword was unsheathed and clutched in his right hand. Lautrec tightened his grip on the sword the big man himself had supplied him with, scanning the suit of black iron armor for a weak point should he need find one. "Listen to me, knight," Tarkus' voice rumbled beneath his helm. "Whatever business you have with Anastacia of Astora, consider it through. You've done favors for us, now I'm doing one for you. You are not to go near her."

His neck. That was the place Lautrec would have to slice into. He could see the man's chin hairs poking out beneath the line of his helm. Of course it was the neck; it was always the neck. "I understand," he said calmly, picturing the man's blood spilling out to paint his black chest plate red. "Where is she...?"

"It's not your concern."

He nodded. "Alright. Then where's the witch of Izalith. She has powers beyond any man here. We need her should we hope to defend this castle."

Tarkus' shoulders slumped just a bit beneath his armor. "The witch... had fled. Rhea informed me they came across a winged crossbreed in the dungeons. The dragon-woman pulled Quelana aside in the tunnels and offered the witch safe passage from the castle. Rhea overheard them. The witch never came back out."

So much for all your talk of abandonment, witch, Lautrec thought bitterly. "A rather large loss, but one we will have to live with."

"Aye," Tarkus agreed. "But, knight... I need your word. You fight alongside us and you kill the hollow. Nothing, and no one, else. Swear it."

"I swear it," Lautrec told him, picturing again the way his sword would fit right under the man's chin if he tried stopping what the last fifteen years of his life had been dedicated to accomplishing. "You don't have to worry about my allegiance," he said, looking around the room. "It's the loyalty of the frightened that I'd worry about should the fight take a turn for the worse."

As if to accentuate his point, the wall beside them rumbled as another slam took it.

Solaire had worked his way through the crowd of soldiers to join them. He pointed at the wall as he spoke, "If they make a hole, it will be, at first, small. This will be the most critical time to hold them, as their numbers

mean nothing in a narrow battle like that. Should the hole widen, however... we will be in trouble. We'll have to retreat further into the castle, fortifying what positions we can to slow them."

"To what end?" Lautrec asked. "We can only fall back so far before our asses hit stone. And then what?"

A look of despair threatened to steal across the Knight of Sunlight's face, but Solaire took a breath and lifted his chin to compose that stoic little expression he wore so proudly. "Then we give them a last fight worthy of remembrance. Praise the Sun."

The knight relayed his battle plan to the soldiers and archers standing in attention in tight clusters around the room from a raised bit of stone at the room's center. When the speech was finished, there seemed little left to be said among the men and women who now faced the crumbling wall before them with wide eyes and furrowed brows. An air came across the room that Lautrec knew well. He'd breathed it, lived in it, in his years of knighthood for Carim. It was the calm, quiet, moment before blood would spill and death would come and battle would begin. He crossed the room to find footing beside a pillar, working the stiffness from his bad knee and taking practice swings with the sword to further comprehend the balance points his feet would need learn should he wish to live through the first wave of the fight. Tarkus was pacing back and forth, like a black cloud swimming through the room, his greatsword trailing at his heel and birthing a display of sparks in its wake. The priestess, Rhea, remained close behind him, her talisman at the ready. Solaire stood, chin raised high, with a group of swordsman at his flanks. The knight, apparently, intended to lead the first charge himself. If nothing else, Lautrec had to admit the man was not lacking for courage. When a slam on the wall came so fiercely, a large slab of stone fell and shattered upon the ground, Solaire gave the command for the archers to nock their bows and stand at the ready.

The next slam sent two more chunks of stone from their homes in the wall to crumble apart.

Lautrec's fingers took on that familiar itch that signaled the birthing moments of violence.

The next slam sent a crack webbing out in a spiral around the grey slabs it took.

He pictured Ana's face, letting his hate course through his body, giving him strength, finding his courage, igniting his senses in a surge of energy.

The next slam-  
-shattered the wall.  
"READY!" Solaire's shout took the chamber; his fist held high above him.

The cold came sweeping in from the black and gaping pit that was formed around the crumbled and broken bits of stone that had once been the wall, and with the cold, the sound of a thousand hollows hissing and grumbling and grunting and hungry came with it. A wind swept forth from the tunnel they'd birthed, and Lautrec watched as the torchlight flickered madly, casting wild and dancing shadows upon the walls. As the flames wavered, he saw many men's courage waver with it. He looked back to the tunnel, but still no hollow came.

"HOLD!" Solaire commanded, taking a cautious step forward with his shield raised.

The knight had made it three more steps before a brown satchel came sliding into the room from within the tunnel. A lit fuse burned from its top.

"DOWN!" Solaire wailed, hurling himself back and shielding his eyes.

Lautrec had just managed to shuffle around the pillar at his back when the bag of firebombs erupted into a pillar of flame and black smoke, the sound of a dozen explosions rocketing off simultaneously threatening to deafen him once again. Someone screamed. Someone else joined the first. Then, only the sounds of the hollows could be heard as they began their assault.

Lautrec leaned out to see a cloud of red eyes coming forth from the black pit in the wall, the firebomb's smoke casting an otherworldly haze around them. At the other side of the hole, Solaire had clambered back to his feet and moved in to meet their attack. Lautrec was taken aback yet again by the man's relentless courage, and found the Knight of Sunlight's ferocity sparking something in himself. He moved out from behind the pillar and sprinted forth to flank the other side of the tunnel. Solaire's eyes met his own briefly, and the warrior nodded his appreciation. Lautrec returned it, and for the first time in a long time, he felt almost like a true knight again.

Then they were upon him.

The first hollow emerged from the smoking pit, hissing like a wild snake and screeching as it lunged at Lautrec with a dagger held high above it. Lautrec lifted his own dagger to catch the blow, parried it, and thrust the sword up beneath the hollow's chin. Its head exploded with the steel and the creature tumbled to its death. Across the gap, Solaire had caught a rain of blows from two emerging hollows with clubs atop his Sunlight Shield. He roared and shoved the attacks back, pressing in to stab a flurry of cuts towards their midsections. Four more birthed from the canal, but Black Iron Tarkus had pressed forth to meet them, wailing a ferocious warcry. Lautrec saw Rhea walking behind him, her head lowered, her eyes closed, and her lips moving in prayer. A golden glow encased Tarkus, granting him with an inhuman amount of stamina. He used it well. His massive greatsword cut through the first pack of hollows as if they were straw practice dummies, slicing and dicing at their limbs and heads until

they came sailing free from their decaying bodies. Six more rushed at him from the smoke, but Tarkus brought his sword down in a two-handed, overhead, plunge, and the whole lot of them were laid flat beneath its mighty blade.

Two hollows swam out of the dark, their red eyes fixed hungrily on Lautrec, and charged him. Lautrec batted away one of their swords with his own, backpedaling to give himself some room. The second, eager for death, made to close the gap and stick him with a spear. Lautrec slashed his blade across the creature's wrist, slicing it clean from his body and felling both the hand and the weapon clutched within. The first hollow screeched and tried bashing him with his shield, but Lautrec side-stepped the blow, spun, and cut the monster's head from its shoulders. He drove the dagger in his offhand into the second's neck. When he pulled it loose, it joined the others Lautrec had killed in a lifeless pile at his feet.

Lautrec was catching his wind when a hollow snuck up on him from the smoke. He raised his sword to catch the creature's attack, but-

-it never reached him. A blue bolt of magic struck the thing in the chest. It screeched, grabbed at its wound, and collapsed to its death. Lautrec turned to see Rickert standing before a group of archers, his catalyst raised high above him.

"FALL BACK FOR THE ARCHERS!" Solaire wailed when the tunnel quieted enough to give them a moment of respite.

Tarkus, Lautrec, and Solaire himself cleared the hole's entrance as another rumbling of hollows began their approach. Lautrec dropped to a knee so as not to catch a poorly aimed arrow in the back and watched as the creature's began swimming out from the darkness. The first wave through, he counted eight. All eight were hissing and growling and darting their red eyes around, eager to find a living soul to take. All eight fell almost immediately as a barrage of arrows stuck them in their chests and their bellies, their throats and their heads. One was clipped in the shoulder. It spun forth towards Lautrec, who was quick to bring his dagger across the thing's throat, ending its wailing.

Another wave pressed an assault. Solaire shouted, "LOOSE!", and the castle chamber came alive with the sound of a dozen arrows freeing from their bows. The pointed tips sailed into the smoke and Lautrec heard screams of agony from the hollows within as they came collapsing out with shafts protruding from their bodies and faces. "LOOSE!" He commanded again, and the next wave of hollows were cut down the same as the previous one.

The entire wall shuddered beneath the weight of another slam that rocked its backside, and a downpour of loose rock came crumbling away from the foundation as the hole widened. The firebomb's smoke was beginning to clear enough for Lautrec to squint into the chasm the

hollows had created, where he spotted a line of spear-wielding creatures marching forth behind a wall of shields; their red eyes poking up over the tops.

"Phalanx formation coming," he called across the gap to Solaire.

The knight nodded and turned on the archers. "HOLD!"

Tarkus' knuckles went white around the hilt of his greatsword. He stomped forth to the hold, Rhea's hand laid softly on the small of his back as the cleric continued casting her miracle, and beat his chest with his gauntlet. The spear-wielders within the tunnel hissed over their shields and eyed him warily, the big man's presence alone enough to slow their approach. "Come on you craven bastards!" He shouted. "Come and face TARKUS!"

The hollows held their ground, peeking out over their shields. Lautrec squinted, watching commotion stir behind the phalanx line. Something big was coming, large enough to cause a canal to open up in the sea of hollow. He heard the snorting of some great beast. "Tarkus," he said. "Get out of the way."

The big man turned to him and a hearty laugh rumbled beneath his helm. "Nonsense!"

The phalanx formation began to break apart, clearing the way for whatever came behind them.

"Get out of the way now!" Lautrec commanded.

But it was too late. The hollows shifted to the walls of the tunnel, clearing a path for a monstrously-sized boar to come barreling forth from the darkness. It's thick head was adorned in a steel-plated helmet, and its tusks were sharpened to fine, ivory, points atop its snout. The beast snarled and charged from the pack of hollows, and by the time Tarkus saw it coming, he had no time to maneuver out of its way. The boar lowered its head before thrusting it up and into the man's chest plate. Both Tarkus and Rhea behind him were flung backwards; Lautrec watching as the priestess' head slapped against Tarkus' armor. They sailed back to land hard on the stone flooring behind them, crashing with such momentum they slidbackwards into a pillar.

The boar snorted and kicked its hind legs; the beast's head swinging around the room so the beady, black, eyes resting beneath its helm could find something to charge. Lautrec had no time to to even consider a plan of attack against the creature: the hollows had rushed out behind it and were pressing hard on an attack. Both Solaire and himself could do nothing but meet it, leaving the rest of them to deal with the wild boar now loose in the castle.

A spearman jabbed at his stomach. Lautrec slapped the blow aside,

wrapped the weapon's pole beneath the pit of his arm, and yanked the hollow forward. It stumbled right into the waiting tip of his sword. Beside him, Solaire drove a jab into the thing's back to ensure the creature's end. Lautrec shoved it aside and the two stood shoulder-to-shoulder as another wave came crashing upon them from the tunnel.

The dark chamber echoed with the clashing of swords as Lautrec parried a blow and Solaire followed up with a riposte. Two more came forth and were slashed down by a flurry of strikes from the Knight of Sunlight. Three more came and fell to Lautrec's blade as he ducked an attack, countered another, and cut his way into the three of their bellies, leaving gaping wounds to leak the black and tainted blood of the dead. He was rising to his feet when another group pressed in, and it was Solaire again who caught the brunt of their assault atop his shield, keeping them at bay long enough for Lautrec to rise, collect himself, and drive his sword into the creatures when they exposed an opening. The thrill of combat was granting him an exuberance he hadn't felt in, perhaps, years. He'd almost forgotten what it was like to stand in combat with a fellow knight at his side. It felt... good.

The hollows choking off the tunnel hissed their aggravation and slashed wildly at the gap between Lautrec, Solaire, and themselves. Over his shoulder, a scream sounded, and Lautrec turned to see the boar dashing across the length of the room, a man's leg pierced and impaled upon one of the thing's mighty tusks so that he was carried helplessly, upside down and wailing in terror. Tarkus had not yet risen, and Rickert had pulled Rhea to safety behind a pillar. He saw the pyromancer chuck a ball of fire at the mad boar, but the thing simply took the blow in its armored side, growled, and charged him.

"That creature has to be dealt with or it will destroy our rear flank," Lautrec told Solaire, keeping one eyes cast vigilantly upon the hollows that filled the tunnel before them.

"Fall back with me," Solaire told him. "And I'll set the archer's arrows upon the tunnel again so that we may put an end to the boar."

The two of them fell back on their heels in retreat. The hollows, perhaps sensing a moment of weakness, rushed to close the gap between them. Lautrec swatted away an attack with the flat side of his sword. Solaire raised his shield to stop a hail of strikes from falling upon his chest. They worked their way back like that, fighting and clawing for every inch, and when the wall fell away on their sides, they spun out of the tunnel and Solaire wailed, "LOOSE!"

The hollows were taken by a barrage of arrows just as they came bursting into the chamber. One arrow, quite poorly shot, clipped the wall right beside Lautrec's head. He craned his neck back and narrow his eyes angrily on the young man who'd fired it, who immediately put up his hands in apology.

When the path had grown so thick with the corpses of the fallen, Solaire gestured him to follow as the Knight of Sunlight spun back to face the boar. The creature was still running rampant around the room, burrowing its tusks into whatever soft flesh it could find. The man whose leg had been pierced earlier had come free, but the wound the beast had left gaping in his leg oozed blood, and it was likely if he survived the encounter, he'd lose the leg. Tarkus had worked himself up to a knee, but the big man still looked shaken. Solaire rushed past him, sword held at the ready, and drove a jab into the boar's plated side as it thundered past in pursuit of an older man in heavy leathers. The attack caught the beast's attention, pulled the black pits of its eyes Solaire's way, and the beast's hooved feet worked at the stone underfoot to spin it around and face the knight.

Solaire bravely held his ground, but when he noticed the archers around him were watching him and not the tunnels, he pointed his sword back towards the wall. "KEEP LOOSING! THE TUNNEL! LOOSE!" He bellowed, and the command seemed to snap the archers from their daze. They returned fire on the tunnel just as a dozen hollow came rushing out.

The boar snorted a contemptuous blast of air from its gaping nostrils, hooves clawing at the ground, and sprinted forward. Solaire feigned a roll to his left, dug his heel into the ground, and leapt right instead. The boar swerved to adjust to the knight's dodge, but it was not agile enough to reach him. It rumbled past, snorting and thrashing its plated head about wildly in frustration.

When it rounded back on Solaire, Lautrec stuck two fingers between his lips and sent a shrill whistle piercing out a taunt at the beast. It's black eyes found him, and the creature adjusted its path to rush Lautrec instead. He feigned left, as Solaire had, but when he saw the beast's approach not take the bait, he actually did dive left. The boar's tusk narrowly missed clipping his thigh as he rolled out of the way.

"Solaire!" A young woman shouted down from the raised bit of stone at the back of the chamber. "We're running out of arrows!"

"Fire til your stock is depleted," Solaire shouted back. "Then... take up arms and do what you can to stop the hollows from gaining further ground."

The woman's face wrinkled with lines of concern, but she nodded anyway.

The boar returned, driving its warpath across the hall so ferociously, its tusk took the edge of a pillar and sent a spray of rock exploding outwards. Lautrec angled the tip of his sword at the beast's snout, challenging it to charge him. The boar dropped its head and made to thrust its tusks into his chest. Lautrec did not roll out of the way. Instead, he dropped to his back and laid flat on the ground. The beast went sailing right over him, and when it was lined up just right, he thrust his dagger up and into the

creature's exposed belly. A trail of blood came loose and the creature roared its agony as it rumbled past him. Lautrec clambered to his feet to see Solaire attempting to dive out of the monster's warpath. He was too late. A tusk collided with his shield.

The Knight of Sunlight went spiraling backwards, and Kirk's barbed sword went sailing from his hand. He caught himself on hands and knees and wrestled to his feet, but when he stood, he stood unarmed, and the boar had already rounded on him to charge again, blood leaking from its wounded abdomen.

Lautrec moved forward, shouted for the knight's attention, and when Solaire looked, he tossed him his blade. The knight caught it, spun back on the boar, and sidestepped just as the beast made to take his side with a tusk. Solaire slashed at the creature, the blade sending sparks raining as it ran the length of the plate armor guarding its side. The boar halted, turned on him, and jabbed with a tusk. Lautrec rushed behind it and raised his hand. Solaire's eyes caught his own and the knight tossed him back the sword. Lautrec plunged the tip into the exposed hind legs of the boar. When the boar turned to him, he tossed the blade back over the creature's body to Solaire, who repeated the attack on the creature's backside.

They did this once more, and when at last Lautrec pulled the bloody blade from the boar's hind quarters, the beast groaned a death rattle, stumbled sideways, and collapsed; its plating slamming the floor with such force, it burrowed into the stone beneath in a crater.

"Solaire!" Someone cried.

Both the knight and Lautrec himself turned on the tunnel, where a dozen hollows had breached the entrance-the archer's arrows apparently depleted-and were spreading out to assault the nearby soldiers. Lautrec rushed forward, only the smallest hint of a voice in the back of his head asking 'Why?', and went to work battling the hollows back into the tunnel before their numbers grew too thick to manage. Solaire fell in beside him, the barbed sword back in his hand, and they fought once more side-by- side against the onslaught of the dead.

The chamber filled with the sounds of swords clashing against swords and swords thundering against shields and screams of pain and screams of anger. The soldiers were doing their best to contain the hollows to a tight pack at the tunnel's mouth, but not every one of them was trained well enough to handle more than a one-on-one fight, and Lautrec saw, with a stealing sense of hopelessness, that the hollows were gaining ground, opening the way for the dozens that filled the tunnel behind them to come spilling forth.

His focus momentarily broken, a hollow managed to parry a rather languid strike of his sword, and Lautrec's balance was thrown off. The

hollow pressed on him, thundering its shield into his side and sending him tumbling to the stone. He lifted his head to see Solaire losing ground to a pack of three hollows at his side before returning his eyes to his own attacker. Its sword struck out at him and he manged to get his own weapon up just in time to swat the attack away. Four more cluttered around the hollow and fixed their red eyes upon him hungrily, hissing and snapping their rotten teeth at the air between them. He made to stand, but an attack came and all he could do was lie back down and block at it with his sword. They closed in on further. To either of his sides, Lautrec could see out of his periphery every last man around him was being pushed further back, and the hollows were widening their little pocket outside the tunnel more and more aggressively. He tried to stand again, but yet another strike forced him to remain where he was so he could block it. The castle is lost, he realized, watching the hollows cloud his vision like a blanket of death eager to fall upon his life.

Fire came then. At first, the shock of the flames searing forth into the pack of hollows came so sudden and hot, that Lautrec believed another pack of firebombs had been detonated. When his eyes adjusted to the intense and burning light of the flame, though, he saw it was far too controlled to be a firebomb. It was focused, like a burning arrow loosed from Izalith itself, and its target were the hollows. The flames bathed every inch of them in its fury, searing apart their armor and clothing, sending a symphony of tortured and tormented screams from the hollow's mouths.

The creatures fell back to escape the fiery death that was taking them, retreating back to the tunnel, stumbling over the smoldering black corpses of their fallen brethren as they went. Lautrec watched as their pocket collapsed and the soldiers, finding a surge of confidence, pressed inwards to hasten their retreat.

Quelana came marching right past his shoulder, the witch's robes rolled to her elbows and her hands joined at the wrists to spray forth the attack that had very well saved all of their lives. The witch's hood had fallen from her head, and Lautrec saw a fierce determination burning in her emerald green eyes that was filled with just as much fire as her palms. She walked the hollows backwards, commanding her flames to funnel them back into the tunnel, and when they had, she sent one last, massive, wave of fire after them. Their screams from the darkness within was enough to let Lautrec know the witch had bought them a moment of respite.

He clambered to his feet, and when he got there, Quelana was standing before him, her eyes narrowed intensely on his own. Lautrec stood holding her gaze, his breath returning to him in jagged pulls.

"I've saved your life twice now," she said, breaking the silence between them. "You owe me."

He nodded. "Fair enough, witch... fair enough." "Don't kill her," Quelana said.

"Kill her? Kill..." He snapped his head back to the arched passages of the Great Hall.

Anastacia stood beneath them.

His vision filled with fire. He saw the charred corpses of his parents in their bed. He saw his whole life shattered and thrown away because of a young girl's vile tongue. He saw Ana; saw her motionless corpse and deadened eyes after his hands has squeezed the life from them. Hate wrapped his lungs, his chest, his entire body. He bolted forward.

"No!" Quelana pleaded behind him.

He barely heard her; barely heard anything then. As he neared the woman who'd shattered his life, he saw tears falling down her treacherous face and wanted nothing more than to plunge his dagger between her eyes and stop their flow forever. He'd nearly reached her when Tarkus sprung up between them and took hold of his arm.

"ANA!" Lautrec roared, and there was so much fury in his voice, he could feel his throat strain beneath its weight.

Quelana joined Tarkus on his other side and the two of them held him back.

Focus, he pleaded with himself. Focus and you can break free. He tried, but his vision was narrowed into a single, red, tunnel that ended on his sister's face. He could only thrash against the witch and Tarkus as they struggled to restrain him.

"Please!" Quelana pleaded.

"Oh, Gods no," an archer muttered beside them, the young man's face frozen in horror as he stared towards the tunnel.

Both Quelana and Tarkus turned to look, but kept their grip on Lautrec's arms.

"What is that thing?" Quelana asked.

"A silver knight," Tarkus said. "Bigger than any I've ever seen..."

Lautrec took a brief moment, doing everything he could to suppress the screams of his burning parents in his head, to glance over his shoulder. One of Anor Londo's Silver Knights had came lumbering out of the tunnel. The thing towered over the room at at least seven and a half feet tall. The slits of its helm swept the area around it and the knight pulled a long, silver, sword from its sheath; the burning hollows at its feet providing

enough light to cast a shine in the blade's reflection. Solaire stood before the silver warrior, but the man looked like a mere play thing in the knight's massive shadow. He raised his shield, but when the silver sword struck out at it, it thundered against the round surface with such force, it was thrown clean from Solaire's hand. He backpedaled, raising his sword in defense.

"I have to help him," Tarkus said. His helm turned on Lautrec, desperate, perhaps, for some way to knock him unconscious, but when Solaire shouted a warcry, the big man released him and went running off with his greatsword in hand.

Quelana shifted herself in front of Lautrec and put her hands up. "Please listen to me!"

"Get out of my way," Lautrec hissed; it was taking every bit of his strength not to just plunge his sword into her belly right there and then. "You saved my life. I don't want to cut you down. I will, though. So move."

Quelana opened her mouth, likely to protest against him, but movement overhead caught both their attention. Lautrec looked skyward to see the strangest sight he'd ever seen. A woman... thing came flying into the room from the passage leading towards the gardens. She was bigger than any woman he'd ever seen, perhaps almost as big as the silver knight, and wings and a tail were protruding form her furry body. Her hair was wild and as pure white as snowfall; it sailed around her in tangles as her wings carried her through the air. When the archers-horrified expressions locked upon their faces-aimed their bows skyward, Quelana shouted for them not to loose, and, perhaps because it was her who had saved them all, they listened.

The winged woman landed beside them, towering at least a head above the tallest man, and setting her soft green eyes upon Quelana.

"Priscilla... what are you doing here?" Quelana asked. "I thought... I thought you would not stand beside humans."

"I do not come for their sake," the woman said, her voice gentle and childlike. "I come for yours and the kindness you did me by freeing me. You spoke of a Chosen Undead whom which your hopes lied with. A young girl? Brown hair cut short? When I was readying to flee from the gardens... I believe I found her, kind witch. She was lying atop a dead man in the snows outside."

Priscilla lowered herself to a knee, and it was then that Lautrec saw she had been carrying something over her shoulder that looked so small in the sky, he'd barely noticed it. The woman-creature wrapped the bundle gently in her arms and lowered it to the floor beside them. When the blanket fell away, Abby's lifeless face rolled out from within.

"Abby!" Quelana shouted, dropping to a knee and cupping her hands around the girl's chin.

Lautrec stared upon her over the witch's shoulder. There was no blood left in Abby's cheeks, giving her a pale, ghastly, appearance. She did not appear to be breathing. He lifted his gaze back to the arched passage of the Great Hall. Ana was no longer in it.

"Where is she!?" He demanded of the soldiers and archers gathered around them. "One of you bastards answer me or I'll cut every last one of you down. WHERE IS ANASTACIA!?"

"Someone start building a bonfire!" Quelana pleaded, and when no one moved, she raised a hand and sent a spray of fire into the air. "Build a bonfire NOW!"

The attack was enough to send a group of them into action, Rickert, Rhea, and Laurentius, among them. They scrambled into the Great Hall and began carrying broken bits of wood and crumbled stone into the chamber to lay in a circle.

"Where is she..." Lautrec continued, his eyes searching desperately for the throat of the woman he had to murder. "WHERE!?"

"Please," Quelana went on, watching as the bonfire was assembled beside them. "Lautrec, please! Your sister is the last firekeeper in Lordran! If she dies, any chance that Abby could be resurrected dies with her! Can't you see that? Are you so blind by your hatred that you aren't aware you'd be throwing away the Chosen's life!?"

"She's dead!" He shouted at her, pointing to Abby's lifeless face. "Look at her, witch! She's not even breathing! It's over! And I... I have to finish this!"

"She might yet still cling to life! She might still have a chance!" Quelana begged, but the witch did not carry any confidence in her voice, and Lautrec thought she might spill tears if she'd tried speaking any further.

Back towards the tunnels, Solaire and Tarkus were locked in battle with the silver knight, but despite their numbers, the massive thing was winning, pressing its relentless attack and easily batting away Tarkus' blows with its shield.

"Help them!" Rhea shouted to him as she laid a stone to complete the bonfire. "Help them fight that thing you coward of a man!"

Lautrec ignored her. His eyes scanned the growing crowd again.

"Lady Quelana," Rhea said. "It is complete."

Quelana lifted her gaze from Abby, to Rhea, and finally, to Lautrec. He stared down at her, nodding. "Go ahead, witch. To complete the bonfire

you need a firekeeper. Call to her. Call to that vile creature so that I may finally make right what has been wrong for an eternity!"

"Please," Quelana begged. "Give her a chance to talk to you."

"She has no tongue."

"She does now. Let her light the fire. Let Abby have a chance. You talked so much when we first met each other about 'breaking cycles' and how important that was to you. Well break this cycle, knight! Break this mad pursuit of vengeance and let your sister live!"

"No," he told her bluntly. "Now call to her."

Quelana pressed her lips together, holding his stare with quiet desperation. When she, apparently, knew no other option remained to her, she turned and said, "Ana. Come here."

Anastacia came walking meekly out from within the Great Hall. Her eyes landed on Lautrec and she took a breath as if she'd forgotten how.

"Light the fire, Ana," Quelana hurried her on. "Light it now."

Lautrec shoved Rickert, who had made his wave between them, aside and marched forth, flashes of red and black clawing at the edges of his vision once again.

Ana pried her eyes from him, ran to a nearby ensconced torch, and chucked it into the center of the firepit, where the wood within began taking flame immediately. Quelana broke a splinter of wood loose and laid it in Abby's blood-drenched and motionless hand.

Another man came between them and Lautrec's fist drove into his throat, choking his air and collapsing him to his knees - and out of the way.

Ana's lip trembled. She backed up right into the wall behind her and pressed flat to it, her eyes wideneing on Lautrec's own and her breath coming in queer, sharp, intervals in her shaking chest. Her knees buckled. Laughing, crying, begging, Lautrec thought as his shadow loomed over her. We had been laughing that very morning away at the ponds and when we departed I did not see your face again until it was drenched in tears-as it is now-crying over our parent's corpses. When I denied you your precious 'forgiveness' you had begged, Ana. Oh, you had begged. His arms shook with rage as his hand clawed forth and reached for her neck. You had begged for the death you deserve. And now I will give it you and set right a lifetime of suffering. For the both of us.

"B-brother..." she croaked as his left hand reached forth and found her throat.

He squeezed.

And stopped.

Something happened then. Something so strange and foreign and miraculous, Lautrec's breath froze in his chest and his mouth fell agape. His hand would not squeeze. The throat it was wrapped around no longer belonged to the woman who'd ruined his life, but to the girl he'd skipped stones with at Carim's ponds. Her tears weren't rivers of sorrow, but trails of love. His anger fled from him, as if all the years of hate and rage and obsession had been wiped clean away, and only the boy who'd loved his sister remained. He pulled a breath that trembled in his throat and felt tears of his own take his cheek. Ana swallowed, her eyes flicking between his own, and a hint of a smile began taking her lips.

"...Lautrec?" She whispered, reaching up to stroke his cheek. "I see you."

He could not speak, could not think, could barely hear. His hand fell from her throat and she stepped closer to him. "How, Ana," he asked, a swirl of emotion so thick in his chest he felt ready to collapse. "How is this possible?" His mind was a blank slate upon which the moment was being written so quickly, he could not stop to comprehend it.

Tears rolled from his sister's eyes. They held upon him before moving slowly to his side. Lautrec's head followed their trail.

Abby was beside him, alive, the color returned to her complexion. She was smiling. He looked down and saw his hand was cupped in her own. She was rubbing her fingers softly against his skin and sending a warmth that traveled from his palm, through his arm, and into his very soul. "I told you," she whispered. "I'd stop you from hurting your sister. I told you I'd set you free."

She'd calmed him. Her... gift. It had calmed him, stolen the anger right out of his body. Lautrec looked back to his sister's face and laughed the strangest laugh he'd ever heard. He reached his free hand to her chin and a smile came to his face that felt so foreign upon his cheeks, he hardly recognized the feeling. Ana leaned forward and kissed the bridge of his nose.

"Lautrec... my little brother," she said. "I see you in there. I see you. The cold knight you became hasn't replaced you entirely. I see my baby brother. Lautrec... I'm so sorry." She broke into a sob.

"FALL BACK!" Solaire's shout broke the bizarre, dream-like, trance he'd been drifting in. Lautrec turned to see the Knight of Sunlight helping Tarkus backpedal from the silver knight before them; a massive stream of hollows pouring out from the tunnel at the knight's rear. Tarkus' side was wounded, the big man trailing a line of blood as they stumbled away.

Lautrec turned back to his sister. His mouth opened to speak, but no words were ready to come. A strange feeling draped over him then that

was not quite peace and not quite anger. He turned and saw Abby had released him. Without her gift, the hate was still there, bubbling beneath the surface, but something else had joined it. Some... compassion for the woman he'd set out to kill fifteen years earlier and now could not bring himself to lay a hand upon.

"Ana... you have to get away from me," he said, the red fires stealing into the corner's of his eyes once again.

His sister nodded, her eyes flicked fearfully between his own, and released his face.

"Go. Now," he told her, lowering his head to his hand in attempt to blot the rage from returning.

"FALL BACK!" Solaire's voice came again, closer. "Where, Solaire!?" Rhea pleaded.

"Logan's prison tower!" He answered. "It is the last hold of the castle we can defend! MOVE!"

Lautrec stood still in the crowd of motion around him like a useless twig protruding from a river stream. He felt a listless depression threatening to send him to his knees.

Then Quelana was at his side, taking up his arm and Abby-somehow still living-fell in at his other side, and the two of them walked him forward.

Lautrec allowed himself to be led, stumbling out of the room and dropping his head to his chest to watch his feet, making sure the numb things did not catch together and trip him. What now? The thought raced through his head and despite his best efforts, could not be shaken. He wasn't even entirely sure what it meant but it raced, round and round and round. Like a circle; like a cycle.

What now? What now? What now?  
Behind them, the hollows were close in pursuit.

Chapter 37

As the sun clawed its way over the distant peaks of the Eastern lands, the path winding from Anor Londo to the Duke's Archives came aglow in dawn's first light; the blizzard Ben had watched twisting the skies into a chaotic swirl of ice and snow from Sen's Fortress growing far more prominent up close, and cold enough to leave frosting on his bearded chin. His eyes narrowed into the storm, and within he found the huddled- together masses of the hollow army. They marched forward, like a river of dirty water flowing into the cliffs beneath the Archives, and their red eyes flitted wildly around them, sending a thousand crimson fireflies to swarm in the snows.

"You okay, kid?"

He turned to see Patches kicking a path towards him through the thick snows underfoot. Ben had collapsed, a pain wringing up through his chest unlike any he'd ever felt and buckling his knees almost instantly, and because he had opted to scout ahead of the rest of them and take point, he was alone when it happened. "Fine," he said, rising to his feet and dusting snow from his breeches.

"Take a spill?" Patches questioned, stepping beside him and helping sweep his cloak and armor free of the ice that would numb the skin underneath if left to linger. "Best to watch your footing carefully up here. A wrong step could lead to a big fall," he said, peaking over the stone barrier that guarded a severe drop to the city streets below.

"She's alive," Ben told him.

If it had been any of the others, they would have looked at him as if he spoke nonsense. Patches knew, though. He'd told the man everything Lautrec had told him-about the witch's theory that he and Abby were linked through some special connection birthed from their joint escape from the Asylum-and so, Patches only nodded.

"She must have been so close, Patches" Ben went on, turning to face the cliffs of the Archives once again. The fires still burned atop the wall, spitting their venomous black smoke into the pale skies above. "So close to death that she nearly blinked right out of existence. And then they brought her back." His gloved hand curled into a fist until the leather squeaked around his knuckles. "Of course they brought her back. She is their savior, after all."

Snow crunched at their rear, and both he and Patches turned to see Sieglinde and the others working their way down the curve of the steps to join them. When Patches turned to face Ben again, his patented grin had risen up the side of his cheek. "So the girl lives. So what? Ben... if her near death was enough to awaken your little 'gift'," he said, patting Ben on the

arm and looking to his hands, a glint taking the Hyena's eyes,"Imagine what power you might have had if she truly had died?"

"It doesn't matter. I just told you," Ben snapped. "They saved her. She's not dead."

"No, she's not," Patches admitted. His gaze drifted to the Archive's, and as his eyes held on the fires that burned there, his grin fell away and a sullen, cold, look replaced it. "Not yet."

"Not yet...?" Ben repeated, and when Patches looked back to him, the hyena was grinning once again.

"Just a thought, kid," he said, tightening his belt and moving forward to descend the stairs. "Just a thought..."

As Patches headed off, the others came climbing down behind Ben. "Aye Siwmae!" Domhnall shouted as his boot slipped beneath him and the merchant nearly collapsed to the snows until Sieglinde's long arm reached out to steady him. "Aye, my thanks kind lady," he told her with a bow.

"Damned mad plan," Andre muttered as he stomped his way forth behind them. The blacksmith was clad only in a wolfskin cloak that he-more times than Ben cared for-told them he'd caught and skinned himself. Beneath, the smith's muscles tenses and bulged with every step, and more than once, Ben saw Sieglinde's eyes move to them and widen. He smirked as Sieg past him, and the woman's hand slapped playfully at his shoulder.

Vince came clambering forward next, but Ben was quick to avert his eyes. He didn't like looking at the profound expression of sorrow that now seemed a permanent fixture upon the man's chubby face. It was Ben himself who'd put that expression there, and though he hadn't intended to take Nico's life, he would not apologize for the accident. It didn't mean he had to like what he'd done, though.

Pharis had the rear guard. Her vibrant red hair came wobbling over the crest of the steps in its pigtails, her cap resting between them now adorned with a layer of snow, but when she spotted Ben watching her, she halted. "What 'r you lookin' at?"

In truth, Ben found himself looking at the woman more and more often as the days past since his capture, perhaps with the same interest in his eyes that Sieglinde's housed when she looked upon Andre. He wasn't entirely sure why. Maybe it was because she was the only thing around to look at, save Sieglinde, but Sieg had felt more like a sister to him than anything else, and Pharis was... well, loud and somewhat annoying, but she was easy enough on the eyes and was curved in all the right places. "I'm fairly sure I'm looking at you," he told her.

"Yeah? Why?"

He shrugged. "I was just wondering that myself."

The woman narrowed her eyes on him shrewdly, and after a moment's debate, reached around her, pulled loose her black bow, and nocked it with an arrow. She took aim at Ben, her elbow lifting to pull the bowstring taught to its apex. "Think your special little 'power' can reach me all the way up here before I put a shaft between your eyes?"

He shook his head, unstirred by her threat. "I doubt it."

She watched him, a cautious, if not somewhat confused, look in her eye, and when she'd, apparently, had her fill of standing in the freezing snows, tucked the bow away with a sigh and moved forward to pass him. He stood his ground, watching her come, and when she moved within striking distance, he thrust his hand forward as if to grab her. She yelped and jolted away from him to join the others. Ben watched her go with a grin. She fears me, he thought, moving to join them. Fears the death I carry in my touch. As he trudged through the snows behind his party to reach Anor Londo's great wall, he reflected on that notion, and, in the end, decided it wasn't such a terrible thing to be feared.

At the base of the stairs, they gathered in a tight circle, the snows coming down so heavy around them, it layered the tops of their cloaks and hid the toes of their boots almost immediately. Andre pressed himself to the edge of the wall at their flank and leaned out for a peek; his mane of grey hair swinging in wild tangles as he did. When he returned to them, his face had grown a few new wrinkles around the eyes. "This is madness."

"Can't be as mad as waiting around for the hollows to come march on us now can it?" Patches retorted.

"They've got a bloody army out there!" Andre growled. "Yer out of yer damned mind if you think we're going to be able to cut our way through it."

"We won't have to," Ben piped up, and the whole circle turned towards him. He had leaned out where Andre had and spotted what he'd seen in his dream the previous night. "You just have to get me close enough to that."

They joined him and followed the path of his extended finger. The hollow army had reached its end and the rear guard was now slowly taking up the tail of the river of dead to close the gap on the Archives. The hollows there were more loosely packed together, less disciplined, and in the center of their ranks, hoisted atop the shoulders of four silver knights, a wooden carriage swayed along in the middle of the brown sea, its sides draped in gold-embroidered silk. As the snows fell softly around it, Ben could see the silhouette of a seven-pointed crown shifting about within. It

was the man (or, perhaps, woman) from his dream. When he turned back to the others, they were staring ahead with pensive looks upon their faces.

"Who are they carrying in that thing?" Sieglinde broke the silence.

"I don't know," Ben admitted. "But I believe he or she is leading the hollows. I saw it in my dream."

"I ain't keen on risking my life at the whim of some boy's dream, young fella," Andre said.

"He is no boy," Patches snapped. "He is the Chosen Undead. The merchant from Zena there knows it to be true and I bore witness to his rebirth from the flames myself. You'd be wise to watch your tongue around him, smith. Might be some day you'll be kneeling before him."

Andre's face darkened, and Ben knew immediately that Patches had gone too far. He stepped between them with his arms raised. "Look, what does any of this matter? We've all come this far, haven't we? Would you really turn back now with our goal so close?"

"Your goal, boy," Andre corrected. "Not mine. Mine was to see this hollow army for myself and get an idea of what I might be up against should a fight come my way. Well I've seen it. And I ain't lookin' ta messin' with it if it ain't lookin' ta mess with me!"

Boy, Ben thought, his fist tightening again. He pictured blood leaking from Andre's nose as it had from Nico's when Ben had set his anger upon him, and wondered how easy it would be to just reach across the gap between them and send his hate into the blacksmith the same way. The rest of them wouldn't question him then. They'd respect him; listen to him... fear him.

"Andre," Sieglinde began, laying a placating hand on the smith's chest. "Benjamin is right. We've come so far. Don't forget about the children that still remain in the castle! If Ben even has the slightest chance to stop the Archives from falling... the risk must be worth it. Isn't it?"

The blacksmith groaned and ran a thick hand through his mane of hair. "Eh... Aye. I s'ppose it might be. But-"

"And don't forget about my father," Sieglinde went on. "He might yet still live, and if he does..." Her next breath came queerly short and she had to hold a hand to her mouth til the moment passed. When it had, she forced a wan smile upon the smith. "If he lives, I would very much like to look upon his face... once again."

"Alright, Sieg," Andre said, taking her in his muscled arm and stroking at her hair with a surprising tenderness. "Alright now."

Domhnall moved beside Ben to stand in the knee-high snows, his arms folded across his chest, his horned helm now caked with ice atop his head. He stared forth to the carriage drumming his fingers along his arms. "That little lectica they've got isn't particularly well defended," he told them. "But there's enough hollow to stop any idea of some mad dash of attack. And then there's those knights... Aye Siwmae. Wouldn't want to face one of them in combat, no sir."

Patches pulled his dagger from his belt and held it to Ben. "Piss on the knights," he snapped. "We get Ben close enough and he runs in and plants this in that crowned bastard's forehead. War's over."

Ben waved off the blade. "No. I don't think I'll need it. Maybe I can end this... another way. Perhaps reasonwith him, er, her, or whatever it is."

Patches held Ben's eyes only a moment before nodding and returning the dagger to its sheath. "You're the boss, kid."

Pharis, who had, uncharacteristically, been holding her tongue, finally piped up from her position just outside the circle. "Me and my black bow will keep them hollows and knights away from you," she said, and when Ben turned to her, she instinctively took a step away from him. "Y-you just... do your little trick and be done with it."

"His little trick?" Domhnall questioned with a soft chuckle.

"She don't know what she's sayin'," Patches quickly interjected, casting a dark glance on Pharis before facing Dom. "He's the Chosen. He don't need no 'trick'. Do ya, Ben?"

"No," he answered, sending Pharis the same look Patches had given her. The bald man had made it clear how bad things might go if the others were to learn of the 'gift' he'd discovered when he killed Nico. Patches had whispered in his ear as they walked side-by-side from Sen's Fortress. He told Ben they'd outcast him, they'd look at Abby with her sweet, innocent, little power to calm others and Ben with his power of death, and they'd paint him as the villain for it - maybe even go so far as to murder him. Patches told him it was for the best if only the three of them knew, at least until the rest of Lordran was ready for a hero that was willing to do what it took to save them, and so, Ben had held his tongue. He could only hope Pharis would wisen up and do the same.

"Well, we ain't gettin' any warmerstandin' out here with our asses to the wind," Andre growled. "I s'ppose we'd best head out there and start this mad plot of yours, boy. I'll take point, stay at my side," the smith told him, fishing a matching pair of caestus gauntlets from a pouch at his hip and sliding his bony knuckles within. He pounded them together, sending a metallic ring echoing off the wall at their side. "If I'm going to die out there for you, you'd better make it worth it."

"Don't talk like that, Andre," Sieglinde scolded the smith before turning on Ben. "We believe in you, Benjamin." Her bastard sword came rising up from her back's holster, the hilt gripped tightly in a two-handed pull.

Patches thumped the butt of his spear against the snow underfoot and grinned. "No time like the present. Let's go end a war, aye?"

Pharis nocked her bow as Domhnall pulled a crystal straight sword from its sheath beside her. They nodded their readiness.

Ben's eyes found Vince, standing dumbly in the snows behind them, his expression as empty and listless as his stare. Andre elbowed the large man's gut and his focus returned to the group. "Huh? Oh... yes. I suppose. I am... er, ready."

Andre gave them each a nod of his head in turn, pulled a deep breath, and spit the warmed air out before his face in a foggy stream, giving him the impression of some great dragon breathing flame. He rounded the corner, and the rest of them followed.

Less than a hundred yards separated their group from the tail-end of the hollow army, and Andre led them across it as quickly as the heavy snow underfoot would allow. Ben was thin, agile, and soon enough he began to outpace the others, but Andre's baleful growl slowed him til the smith could catch up. The blizzard that raged above the Archives was far more tame along Anor Londo's wall, but the snows came thickly enough to blur their vision, and by the time they'd made it in striking distance of Pharis' black bow, Ben lifted his gaze to see the stragglers at the rear of the army had turned on their approach; red eyes staring hungrily forth in the blizzard as they neared. He heard Pharis grunt with exertion behind him, and the next moment, a shaft was sailing over Ben's head. It took one of the hollows right between its crimson eyes, dropping and killing the creature instantly. Those clustered around it looked from the group to their fallen brethren and back. Their mouths gaped into black pits and hateful hisses erupted from within. The sound caught the attention of those grouped around them, and a cascade of hollows spun back to face them. Another of Pharis' arrows fell a creature, and that was apparently all the hollows were willing to stand.

They charged.

"Don't let 'em jump on ya!" Andre barked, lifting his arm to halt their progress and taking up a defensive stance. "Cut down the ones before us! Leave the ones that try 'n get the flank! Cut a path to that carriage! Look out!"

A hollow's spear launched from its hand. The weapon sailed through the blizzard, slicing through falling snows in a blur, and had Ben not stepped to his side, would have planted itself in his chest. He turned to face the attacker, but two sword-wielding hollows had already closed the gap

between them. Ben reached for Nico's crescent axe at his hip. He'd gotten it halfway unsheathed when the hollows leapt for him.

Andre roared and the smith's gauntlet-clad fists found one of the creature's heads. The muscles on his back tensed as Andre took hold of the thing by the neck, held it to the snows below, and pounded its skull. The other was in mid-flight when Patches stepped forward and caught its belly with his spear. The glow of the creature's eyes dimmed and it slumped onto the weapon, dead. Ben turned and Patches gave him a nod.

"Argh!" Sieglinde bellowed a warcry as she stepped between Andre and Ben with her bastard sword wrenched back over her shoulder. Three hollows had emerged from the blizzard before them, and as they scrambled into striking distance, Sieglinde unleashed a slash that hacked the first near clean in half and sent the other two back in retreat. Domhnall joined beside the broad-shouldered woman, covering her flank as a fourth creature crawled up from the snow itself to try and plant her with a dagger. The merchant took up a funny stance, perhaps one more commonly seen in his homeland of Zena, and swatted the hollows attack aside. He pressed in on his front foot and cut the creature back until it lost its footing. His crystal sword took it in the neck.

Pharis launched a series of arrows into the skies in quick succession. The hollows that were still working their way back from the army's rearguard were caught beneath the shafts as they fell alongside the blizzard in a storm of death. One broke free unscathed and raised its sword over its head to lunge for them. Ben had retrieved the weapon of the man he'd killed from its sheath, and Nico's axe swung easily enough before him to halt the creature's attack. The second swing found the hollow's neck. Its head rolled from its shoulder to plant itself in the snow.

"Andre!" Sieglinde shouted, and Ben looked to see the woman pointing around their left side, where a rogue group of hollows had broken off from the assault and moved up their flank.

"Forward! Press forward!" Andre commanded, and the smith's thick legs began kicking at the snows before them to cut a trench into the army's core.

Ben and the rest of them moved to join him as a second pack of hollows split off to their opposite flank. If we're slowed down now, we die, Ben thought, and was surprised that the idea did not frighten him. In fact, it seemed to only make him feel more alive. He lifted Nico's axe and hacked down a hollow as it rushed him, roaring a warcry over the fallen thing as it died. He raised his line of sight to the carriage swaying heavily atop the silver knight's shoulders. It was still a good way deeper into the army, and, in fact, he didn't think they'd even noticed a commotion stirring yet. He shouted as another hollow came and Ben brought his axe up to deflect a jab of the creature's spear. Ben was moving in for the kill when Pharis sent an arrow into its head instead.

They pressed forth. As they neared the carriage, closing the gap more and more with every arduous step into the blizzard they took, the hollows on both of their flanks now pressed in as well. They'd sealed off the path Andre had cut them from the stairs, and now Ben and those he'd promised wouldn't have to die were entirely encased: the army ahead; the hollows at their sides and rear. He stole a glance towards the wall behind them and saw Pharis turned around and backpedaling beside Domhnall, launching arrow after arrow at the hollows in attempt to stave them away from choking off the path. If she, perhaps, had another archer or two beside her, it might have been successful. She did not, though, and her arrows were slowy losing the battle for the path.

Andre fists came together around a hollow's head; a spew of black blood leaking from the creature's punctured cheeks as it slid to the smith's knees in defeat. Andre kicked it out of the way and looked to the carriage. "We're still too damned far!" He shouted, his mane flying around him as he surveyed the flanking hollows. "Gods save us now! Just keep fighting forward!"

"Ben!" Domhnall yelled. Ben turned just in time to see four hollows had broken free from his left flank and were charging him with spears and sword drawn. Pharis fell one with an arrow, and both Domhnall himself and Sieglinde closed off the path with drawn weapons at their waists long enough for Patches to come up between them and jab his spear out at the hollow's throats and faces.

Ben heard a hiss over his shoulder that sent a chill along his spin. He spun with axe raised to catch a hollow's leaping sword slash. The weapons clashed, he metal clanged, and a rain of sparks seared his cheek, but Ben managed to work the blade aside, wrench his axe back up, and plunge the pointed backside into the hollow's chest.

The flanking hollows moved in tighter, forming a fist of soldiers that was quickly closing its hand around them. Pharis shouted, and Ben turned to see the hollows at their backside had not only closed off any chance of retreat, but had worked their way close enough to begin taking swings at the red-headed woman behind them. Domhnall tumbled into his side as a hollow's sword danced with the merchant's own. Ben shouldered around them, but a new wave of hollow was already pressing from the side and he had no room to maneuver.

Sieglinde's bastard sword hacked down a rushing attacker. Andre pounded another into the snow and crushed its skull beneath his boot. Domhnall sent a parry and riposte into the hollow he was tangled with. Patches jabbed the tip of his spear into a creature's foot, pinning it in place long enough for him to unsheath his dagger and slice its throat. All around Ben, his group was winning the battles, but the war was already lost. That much was now clear to him. The flanks had grown too tightly packed with soldiers, and Ben, Andre, and the others could not gain any ground forward while under constant attack. Their backside was cluttered

with red eyes, and if the hollows had the sense to all strike in at once, their group would be smothered in a blanket of swords and spears. And every one of them would die.

Patches, perhaps coming to the realization himself, moved beside Ben, catching his breath and sending wide-eyed glances all around them. "This part of your dream, kid? What in Izalith are we supposed to do now?"

Beside them, Andre fended off a flurry of strikes, but he could see the smith beginning to tire and slow, and it would only be a matter of time before he halted all together and was lost. Ben's eyes moved from the smith to the carriage ahead, that still swayed above the silver knights thirty yards away. He tossed Nico's axe to the snows and cupped his gloved hands around his mouth, craned back his neck, and bellowed, "Hey! HEY! Back here! HEY!"

"The hell 'r you doin', boy!?" Andre snapped. "Back here!" Ben shouted, ignoring him. "Andre..." Sieglinde said. "We're in trouble."

The hollows had finally coordinated their attack. They gave up on sending packs of twos and threes forth to be cut down and had lined themselves in a long, twisted, formation that wrapped around Ben and the others like a coil of rope waiting to cut the air from a hanged man's neck. Their beady red eyes floated up over their shields and they hissed and snapped at the falling snows before them. They began to tighten in.

"Aye Siwmae," Domhnall muttered, his mop of auburn hair tumbling about as his head snapped in every direction to watch the attack press in on them. "This is bad, my friends."

"Bad!?" Pharis' shrill voice sounded behind them. "We're done! He led us to our deaths!" She said, pointing towards Ben.

"HEY!" Ben went on shouting.

The hollows closed around them tighter. And tighter. And tighter.

Sieglinde hacked down the jab of a hollow's spear over its shield. Her back pressed into Ben's shoulder in retreat, nearly knocking him into the approaching hollows on the other side.

"Nico... perhaps I'm coming to see you sooner than I'd thought," Vince said, his heavy cheeks red and damp with perhaps sweat or perhaps tears.

The hollows moved in so closely around them, the group was pinned back-to-back.

"Damn you!" Ben roared at the carriage. "I'm the Chosen! Do you hear me!?

I'M THE CHOSEN UNDEAD! STOP!"

And just like that: they did.

The hollows halted, quieting down and fixing their glowing red eyes on the group, their rotten breath poisoning the air around them. The march of the silver knight's ended, and Ben squinted into the snows to see a hand had protruded from within the silk drapes that covered the carriage. It was finely manicured and adorned with silver and gold rings on every fingers, most inlaid with gems or jewels, and the fingers were extended, as if asking for a moment's respite.

The circle he stood in had grown so quiet, Ben could hear the heavy breaths of the group around him as they stared forth to the carriage as well. A moment of such heavy silence passed, he felt as if his breath were being sucked right from his chest in its oppressive quietness, then the manicured hand drew back within the silk drapes and the hollows lined between Ben and the silver knight's parted; birthing a chasm in the midst of the brown sea that worked its way right up to the carriage itself.

"Gods..." Andre muttered. "What's happening?"

"It heard me," Ben said, swallowing and refusing the stir of fear that was threatening to rise up into his chest access. He turned to Patches, but even Patches looked uncertain.

The silver knights' heads were turned back, the dark slits of their helms fixed upon Ben himself. They were waiting.

"I'll be back," Ben told them, and then there was nothing left to do but walk, and so he walked.

This is the dream, he thought, his eyes flicking from hollow to hollow as the things watched his passing. The man/woman in the carriage. The hollows allowing me passage. Abby's warning in the darkness. 'Up to me'. It was true. Every bit of it was true. The realization sent a wave of courage through him, and Ben suddenly found his feet moving with greater ease. He was the Chosen, the true Chosen, and his fears quelled with every step towards his goal; towards his fate.

When he reached the carriage, the silver knight at his side standing so tall, its massive shadow completely encompassed him beneath it, Ben turned back once more to glimpse the group that had taken him there. Every one of their eyes were fixed forward upon him, their expressions a matching palette of fear and wonder. He swallowed the last bit of his fear, lifted his boot to the carriage's railing, and climbed up to push beneath the silk drapes.

A rush of sweet perfume filled his nose as Ben worked his way onto the cushioned bedding of the carriage. All around him, the drapes were thin enough to let in dim light, but heavy enough to obscure the figures of the

hollows and knights around it into vague shapes. At the head of the bedding, the man-and Ben could see now it was truly a man, despite his appearance-was resting back against a mound of purple and silver pillows. The seven-pointed crown was adorned upon his brow, like a star exploding outwards from his head, and a veil draped from its front to conceal his face. Ben squinted, and could make out finely plucked eyebrows and painted lips beneath, but a man's jawline and nose. The strange figure was dressed in a silk robe, not entirely unlike the draping of the carriage, and his pale legs were poking out the ends of a dress and clad in silver sandals with pink and yellow flowers tucked into the straps.

"You're not her," the man spoke, his veil dancing above his lips as his breath trickled along its underside, and Ben was not surprised to hear his voice was soft and as sweet as the perfume he wore.

Abby, he thought, a familiar anger rising in his chest. He thought I was Abby. "No. I'm not her."

"And yet," the man went on, "you wear an aura of importance around you. I can see it. Smell it. Feel it." The man's head cocked to the side and his ring-adorned hand stroked at his chest. "So who, or what, are you?"

"My name is Benjamin," he explained. "I am the true Chosen Undead, reborn from the flames upon my rescue from the Undead Asylum. You are right. I am not Abby, because Abby is a fraud and not the one you should be marching to retrieve." He took a breath, the words he'd spoken felt so right coming from his lips, his cheeks grew numb with excitement. "I am the one you and your army have sought out. I am the Chosen Undead. And I can give you anything she could have. So tell me. What is it that you want?"

The crowned and veiled man stared at Ben then for a long time without speaking; his fingers dancing along his chest as his tongue ran the length of his upper lip. A smile rose up his painted mouth. "You tell it true," he spoke the words as if he were in awe of them. "I see it now. You are a Chosen one."

"The Chosen one," Ben corrected him.  
A girlish giggle sounded beneath the man's veil. "Hmmm, perhaps so." "Now tell me. What do you want with me?"

"My name is Gwyndolin," the man answered. "I am the daughter of Lord of Cinder and Keeper of Kiln, Gwyn. My father is dying, and the world around us dies with him. I, and the army I lead, only wish to see the Chosen face against him. And stop Lordran from fading to darkness."

"You want me to kill Gwyn?" Ben asked.  
"If you are the one true Chosen?" Gwyndolin questioned. "Yes. My father

needs to die at the hands of the Chosen Undead so that the great bonfire in the Kiln of the First Flame can be restored, and Lordran can be saved. And so that myself, the hollows, and every man, woman, and child that still clings to life can go on living."

"And if that doesn't happen?"

The man whimpered and brought his slender fingers to his painted lips. "Oh, it would be a terrible thing. It is happening all around us right now as we speak, but it will grow far, far, worse. The world would fall into a great and endless spiral of cold and darkness that no living creature but the dragon's could survive. Lordran would return to them then, bringing about a second age of darkness in which the eternal dragons will reign once more for, perhaps, an eternity."

Ben nodded, refusing to let the image of a black world reigned over by dragons in the skies give birth to the fear that he'd managed to suppress so far. Instead, he changed topics. "You are human... and yet the hollows obey you?"

"The hollows are, in a way, just as alive as you or I young man, and no living thing wants to end. A change has befallen Lordran, perhaps as a last means of salvaging this prosperous age of fire we live in, and with the change came many strange occurrences. The hollows arriving upon my doorstep to await my orders was one such occurrence. Two Chosen Undead... that, I believe, is another."

"One," Ben corrected. "Me."

"Hmmm..." Gwyndolin hummed, his long-lashed eyes flicking across Ben's features. "You will come willingly to the Kiln?"

"I know now it is my destiny to save Lordran," Ben told him. "I am its hero, and I will do what I must to fulfill that fate."

"Ah, but simply facing off against my father isn't enough to save Lordran. You are a man, and a man must choose. It is that free will that bestows within us a power not even the mighty dragons can wield. The power of choice. To see Lordran prosper into a new era of flame... or to stand as its ruler in a world of darkness."

Ben frowned. "I don't understand. You said if the Chosen didn't go to Gwyn, the darkness would come and destroy Lordran."

"It is different. Lordran will end without my father being replaced. If the Chosen faces and kills him and chooses not to relight the flame, Lordran will not end. It will only change. It will darken. But it will live on."

"With the Chosen Undead as its ruler..." Ben finished, his eyes falling to his gloved hands. He curled them into fists and thought of the way Pharis had looked upon him with such fear in her eyes after he'd put his death

into Nico. He wondered if being a ruler meant all men and women would hold such looks in their eyes when they gazed upon him.

"The internal conflict that lies within a man's heart will decide the fate of the new Lordran once my father is through," Gwyndolin admitted. "But either way, he must be dealt with. Before it is too late."

"Call them off," Ben said. "Your hollow army. The Archives mean nothing to you now. You have me."

Gwyndolin's head cocked further on its side. "And what if you aren't the Chosen Undead Lordran needs as its leader into the new world?"

Ben lifted his eyes to the man's own and held them. A flash of anger took his chest. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"If there are truly two of you," Gwyndolin began. "Then only one will do what is right and the other? Well, I would rather not even think on it. No. I need you both, that much is clear to me now. I will take you as my prisoner to the Kiln, and I will retrieve this girl from the Archives who has so defiantly refused me. The humans within that defend her must die for their sins. All men must pay for their sins." The man's face, for the first time, darkened a bit. "Even my father's precious firstborn."

Ben didn't know what the man meant by that, but he was growing far too angry to even care. Here was another man telling him he wasn't good enough. Another man whose hopes rested with Abby and not him. Another man who didn't believe in him, didn't respect him, didn't fear him. He wanted Gwyndolin to fear him. He wanted it so badly, his arms trembled. He steadied himself and came to a realization. "You command the hollow?" Ben asked, forcing his voice to remain calm.

"I do."

Ben nodded. "Then you are a powerful leader... and I submit myself to you. I will do anything you ask of me in order to aid your capture of Abby so that you may take us to the Kiln." He bowed his head.

"And you are a wise boy for doing so," Gwyndolin cooed, returning the bow. "Perhaps your wisdom is what Lordran will need in its new age once we settle things with my father."

Ben's air felt hot in his nose; his skin was burning beneath his gloves. He lifted his head and forced a smile anyway. "To celebrate Lordran's first allegiance between the glorious Gwyndolin, commander of hollows, and myself, a Chosen Undead," he began, reaching to his hand and plucking the glove away from it. "A shake of hands?"

Ben extended his bare hand across the gap between them.  
Gwyndolin's painted lips spread into a smile beneath his veil. "Sweet

thing you are," he cooed, daintily extending his own manicured hand, limp at the wrist, so that Ben may take it.

And Ben did.

And Ben squeezed.

And a few moments later, as Gwyndolin's head rocked back and forth in violent spasms and the blood raced from his nose in great crimson streams, Ben grinned.

Chapter 38

When the last of the men and women were through, ducking and scrambling and crawling forth in a mad dash beneath the arched tunnel that wound its way back to Logan's prison tower, Quelana's eyes found Solaire's across the passageway's gap between them. The Knight of Sunlight nodded, and Quelana went to work birthing a burning circle of fire in the palm of her hand. As the attack cooked, she held vigil over the hall before them, where, distantly, the sounds of the approaching hollows were climbing a crescendo as they neared. By the time the first of them came scrambling around the corner, their mouths gaping and hissing, their swords and spears thrust above their heads so that they took on the appearance of a great brown wave of water crashing down the length of the hall, the Great Chaos Fireball was ready. Quelana launched it, but did not bother sticking around to watch the aftermath: the creature's screams were confirmation enough that they had burned.

"The lava will melt the feet of those who attempt to cross it," she told Solaire as the two of them rushed the length of the Archives' outer balcony, careful to maintain footing atop the ice-caked stone. "But it won't last forever."

"Very good, Lady Quelana," Solaire said. "You have bought us valuable time and you have my sincere gratitude."

They came to the end of the balcony, where the path twisted around a curve and hooked beneath two massive, iron, doors. Beyond, Logan's mad tower spiraled down into the earth in a twist of stone stairs and crumbling brick. Atop a raised platform that housed the tower's sole ladder, a group had halted, though whether to wait for Solaire and herself or simply because the ladder had become too cluttered to move any faster, Quelana did not know. Tarkus was leaned against the barrier there, his shaggy fall of hair swaying above the steep fall to the tower's base, and his face scrunched up in agony. His meaty hands had a hold on his side, where blood oozed through his fingers from the wound the silver knight's sword had left him with. "Rhea!" He growled. "Gods, where is that bloody cleric when you need her!?"

Both Rhea and Rickert were at the other end of the platform, aiding the last of the men and women forth, guiding their feet and hands safely to the ladder's rungs. Upon Tarkus' shout, the priestess rose and scrambled around a passing group of children at the hem of their mother's skirt. The mother helped her little ones onto the ladder as Rhea moved to Tarkus' side and pried his hands from the wound. "It's too deep, Tarkus. I can sooth it for now, but I'll need to stitch it shut to stop the bleeding."

"Piss on stitches, just make me forget the pain long enough so I can get back to crushing those hollowed bastards back to Izalith," he told her. His eyes flicked to Quelana. "No offense, witch."

"You can't Tarkus!" Rhea went on, holding an authoritative finger to his face. "You'll lose too much blood if you don't keep pressure on the wound! Now, here, hold this bandage to your side and don't let it go!"

The sight of Rhea, almost comically small beside Tarkus, giving the big man orders was an odd one. However, when the priestess turned her stern look on him, Tarkus groaned, but gave his acquiescence anyway. He took a heavy cloth from the cleric, pushed it to his side, and allowed Rhea to lead him to the ladder to begin his descent.

Quelana's gaze moved to the side of the platform where both Lautrec and Abby were seated against the barrier. The knight, who had dragged Quelana herself into this whole mess so long ago, was staring at his own boots, a queer, vacant, expression on his face that he'd been wearing since his encounter with Anastacia, who-Thank the Gods for it, Quelana thought-had already joined the majority of the castle below in the tower. Quelana did not want to think what might transpire between the two if they were enclosed in such tight proximity to one another atop the platform. Part of her was glad to see the man calm, the anger and rage and madness that had gripped him just moments earlier outside the Great Hall all but gone now, but another part of her wished some of that fire would return to him so that he might stand and aid them. Lautrec, if nothing else, was a fierce knight and a sharp mind, but at the moment, he fit neither of those descriptions.

Abby noticed Quelana staring, and rose to meet her eyeline. Something in the girl had changed, too, and when Abby's eyes found her own, Quelana could not find any of the innocence and optimism that once flourished so vibrantly within. The girl's brow was drawn in a sharp line to the bridge of her nose as she approached, and for one mad moment, Quelana thought she meant to strike her. Instead, Abby extended her arms, wrapped them around Quelana's waist, and hugged. Quelana opened her mouth, but found no words worth saying, so closed it and hugged Abby back instead.

"I made many mistakes," Abby said, keeping a hold on her. "And you still worked to save my life. If you'll accept it, Quelana, you have my apology. I'm... I am sorry."

"You don't ever have to apologize to me, Abby," Quelana said. "It was Logan and Chester who warped your mind. You were only their victim. As was I."

"You're kind to me even now," Abby said, finally pulling herself back so she could look upon Quelana. She smiled, but the expression never quite reached that hard look in her eyes. "I won't make anymore mistakes. I promise you that. If you would, somehow, let me earn back your trust..."

"Abby," Quelana began with a shake of her head. "At your worst, you said many cruel things to me. But one thing you said that was true, and even I didn't realize it at the time, was that I looked at you as one of my sisters. I did then. I do now. You already have my trust."

Abby nodded, and her smile took on a bit more sincerity. "Thank you, Quelana." Her eyes fell to Lautrec beside them, still seated on the floor, still blankly staring ahead at nothing. "I don't know if he's alright. I'm not sure if I did the right thing by stopping him anymore."

"An innocent woman lives because of what you did," Quealan told her. "It was the right thing to do. Just... stay with him and try to keep him safe until... well, until whatever is going on inside him ends. And try to steer clear of Anastacia."

Abby nodded. "Alright. Yes. You're still as wise as the day I met you, Quelana, and I'm happy that you are here at our side." She squeezed Quelana's arm appreciatively, turned, and took Lautrec by the arm. The knight looked to her as if he hadn't even realized there was anyone else around him, but when she tugged at him, he allowed himself to be guided to his feet, and then to the ladder without a word of protest.

When they disappeared beneath the platform's edge, only Quelana and Solaire remained. She moved nearer to the knight and pressed to the archway across him that led to the balcony. He looked to her and pulled a deep breath. "They come," he said, sliding his sword from its sheath and spinning out to block the narrow hall before them. "Go on, Lady Quelana. Join the others. You have served us far greater than I could have ever

hoped of an ally. I will hold this passage til the last breath leaves my lungs to buy you all more time. Praise the Sun."

"You're coming with me," Quelana told him; it wasn't a question.

He smiled wanly at her. "No, my lady. My place is here."

She shook her head as she looked upon him. The knight stood tall and powerful-looking in his armor, the polished surface glinting against the torchlight, and his eyes did not hold even the slightest bit of fear beneath his crop of dirty blond hair, but the man was just that-a man-and he couldn't possibly hope to hold off an army. Even with his gift of lightning, Quelana thought. "Why, Solaire? Why do you carry such a death wish? Since we met in the Darkroot Gardens, you've spoken of sacrificing yourself. Why? You are a good knight and a better man. You're life is far more valuable to those around you than your death could ever be!"

"You are kind to say so, my lady," he said. "But I have always known my life would end in sacrifice. I've known since perhaps even my birth. I believe everything happens for a reason, Lady Quelana, and all things beneath the mighty Sun have a purpose. My purpose is to die for the better good. It isn't something I look forward to, but... it is my fate."

"Then defy your fate!" Quelana shouted.

The sound of a hundred hollows began swelling from the balcony. The creatures had made it past her lava, and now their aggression had only seemed to grow more tenacious, their rage more relentless, as they neared.

"Leave me now, my lady," Solaire told her, shifting his feet into a defensive stance and raising his sword before him. "Perhaps we shall meet in the next life."

There are few things more stubborn than a knight with his honor intact, Lautrec had said to her at Domhnall's the second night they'd stayed there. The saying held true. Quelana held her frustrated gaze on the man, and after a moment's debate, realized what she'd need do. She stepped up beside him and raised her arms so the cloak around them fell to her elbows.

Solaire turned on her, frowning. "What are you doing?"

"Our fates are interwoven," Quelana said. "If yours is to die here, so is mine."

"No. Lady Quelana, the people need you!"  
She faced him. "Oh? Why?"  
He shook his head with incredulity. "Why? My lady! Your strength! Your

ability! Your... your courage! They need leadership down there!"

"You're right," she agreed. "They do."

She extended her hand to him. Solaire's eyes moved from her, to her hand, and back. Slowly, the understanding rose upon his face. He gave a slow nod of his head. "...alright, my lady. Alright."

Together, they fled to the ladder and descended to join the fleeing crowd below just as the first cluster of hollows came swarming around the bend of the balcony. The spiraling twist of stairs that wrapped the tower's outer wall were, for the most part, cleared at the upper levels, but a bit further ahead, Quelana could see the lower levels were still brimming with people attempting to flee, their endeavor growing more arduous with every passing moment as the last stragglers joined the tail end to pack the stairs shoulder-to-shoulder. She was amazed-able now to look upon those that had not yet fallen to the hollow at the base of the tower-at just how many there were.

As she sprinted forth, Solaire at her side, Quelana stole a glance back to the ladder, where the red eyes of the hollows peered back at her from its top. One was shoved, likely unintentionally, forward, and had barely the time to unleash a hiss from its mouth before it crashed head-first to the stairs below and went silent. The creatures looked frustrated by the lack of easy passage, and more and more began crowding the platform's top, angrily shoving their way forward and raising their weapons overhead. The ladder would slow them, but not for long. Quelana returned her attention to her fleeing feet and picked up the pace.

When they'd made it as far as they could, the last of the refugees blocking further passage at the bottom of the stairs, Quelana moved to the barrier at her left and leaned out to survey the tower's base. Instantly, she saw what had slowed their progress.

A crowd had formed at the foot of Logan's mad machine, clogging up the stairs as the men and women stared wide-eyed and dumbstruck upwards at it. Though Quelana knew how foolish they were to birth a bottleneck in the path of escape, she could hardly blame them for the rapt attention they held upon the massive tower of spinning parts in the room's center. When she'd last seen it, it had been moving and spinning with a ferocious velocity, but now the thing had picked up pace even more and the bars and metal bits that flew around it in a circle were moving at such breakneck speeds, the pieces were fading into one, massive and swirling, ball. The bronze bar that had wrapped the machine's outer core had become a glowing circle that shone golden flashes of reflected torchlight around the thing in tight intervals. It hummed and rumbled, like the hungry belly of some ancient beast, and the wind the machine spewed from its momentum was enough to send the women's hair and dresses near its base into a frenzied dance around their heads and legs.

"Keep moving!" Solaire shouted down to them when he joined at Quelana's side. "Keep the crowd moving!" When Rickert hopped up on a bit of raised stone and began waving his arms and shouting to guide the crowd forward, it seemed to help start a fire under their feet. Solaire fixed Quelana with an apprehensive look. "My lady... that machine..."

"I don't know what it does," Quelana answered preemptively. "I know Logan had his golems working on it, and when last I came through this way, it had already been turned on. By whom, I do not know."

He nodded, the machine's golden flashes painting his face as he looked upon the thing. "Let us hope it does not explode. The way it wobbles... it doesn't look very stable, does it?"

"No, I suppose not," Quelana admitted, but her attention was elsewhere. At the top of the stairs, the hollows had began descending lengths of thick rope from the raised bit of platform, sliding down in packs at a much quicker pace than the ladder would have afforded them. She searched within herself for her inner flame, and felt it was not quite ready to birth another Great Chaos Fireball. A strong flame does not waver, she thought as the first of the hollows broke into a mad sprint around the twisting stairs.

"Move!" Solaire commanded again when he saw the hollows approaching.

The knight's shouting combined with Rickert-and now the pyromancer Laurentius, too, had joined the sorcerer in guiding the crowd-was enough to begin slowly clearing out the foot of the stairs. Quelana and Solaire fell in line at the very end of the refugees, taking up defensive positions as the hollows came flooding down upon them. A scream behind her caught Quelana's attention. She turned to see a group near the twin pillars that lead into the barred section of the tower ducking and cowering as Priscilla came flying out from the tunnels. Every eye fell to the winged crossbreed as she soared overhead, spotted Quelana, and flew to the barrier beside her to perch on its edge.

"Kind witch," Priscilla began, catching her breath. "I scouted the gardens as you requested. There is no escape that way. Humongous, legged, shellfish have come lumbering up from the depths of the Crystal Caves. They choke the exit off. I barely made the return journey myself."

"But you did return," Quelana told her. "And for that you have my gratitude." Her eyes moved to the approaching hollow, then to the refugees now filing in beneath the passage to the last room left they could defend, and finally returning to the crossbreed's own. "Priscilla, listen to me. There is a good chance we might all die here. If the fight takes a turn for the worse... you take Abby and you do everything you can do see her away from this castle. Do you understand that?"

Priscilla nodded.

"Do that and you will have repaid the debt of me freeing you beyond my wildest hopes."

"I will do what I can... for you, not the humans," the crossbreed said, spread her wings, and soared back down to the lower levels; the wind of Logan's machine sending her snowy white hair into a blizzard around her head.

"Quelana!" Solaire shouted.

She spun back to see the hollows rounding the last bend of stairs, their weapons raised and ready to strike. She lifted a hand to command a Great Chaos Fireball, not entirely sure she even had the strength to, and stepped forth til she was between the hollows and the men and women behind her. Solaire sidled past her and cut down the two who'd taken point in a flurry of jabs. When the work was done, he glanced to Quelana's hand, saw the ball of death that had grown there, and hurried out of the way of her path. Quelana launched the attack as high up the stairs as she could. It splashed at the feet of the next group of hollows, melting away their lower halves almost instantly in a flash of fiery red chaos, and spreading a pool of lava to choke off the pursuit of those behind them.

She fell to a knee, her head spinning and her knees buckling.

"My lady," Solaire called, rushing beside her and laying a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm okay," she assured him. "I just... need to rest a moment." She wiped sweat from her brow that felt as cold as ice water on the back of her wrist. "My inner flame needs time to rise again. If I can just-" She made to stand, but her legs buckles again, and if Solaire hadn't been beside her to take hold of her waist, Quelana might have collapsed to the floor entirely.

"You need to lie down," the Knight of Sunlight told her, and Quelana was in no position to argue with him. She nodded.

Solaire scooped her into his arms and rushed to the bottom of the stairs just as the last of the men and women there were clearing out. The knight shuffled past the stragglers, carried Quelana to the wall beside the far pillar, and lowered her to the floor. He stood, wrenching his head back the way they came, and when he saw her fire spell had afforded him a moment's respite, the knight began making the rounds of the tower, ordering the women and children into the next room, and commanding the able-bodied men to take up any arms they could find. Quelana watched him, pulling deep breaths to catch her wind, and remaining as still as possible so as to better recover from her exertion.

Atop the stairs and beyond her lava pool, the hollows red eyes glared hatefully down upon those they wished to slaughter. Logan's machine went on spinning its mad dance in the tower's center, and the flashes of

gold seemed only to rile the creatures anger further and further every time it painted its light upon their faces

"Witch," a voice called from her side.

Quelana turned to see the Knight of Thorns resting against the wall a bit further along the tower's curve. His ankles were in fetters, his wrists in manacles, and when he saw her looking at them, he shook them to rattle against one another. "Got me all locked up they do," he told her, a grin rising up his cheek despite his circumstances. "But I can fight. Aye, you know that. Saw me on the bridge that day I nearly bested the knight of Carim. Get me out of these things, witch, and I'll fight for 'em. Yeah. I'll fight good."

A grimace took her face as she held the man's eyes. The last time she'd looked into those black pits of his, he was attempting to rape her. "You can die in your chains you vile creature," she hissed. "These men don't need your help."

His grin fell away immediately, a dark look swimming up to take its place. "...fire bitch," he growled, and when Quelana did not bother replying to the insult, he narrowed his eyes more shrewdly upon her and the grin slowly returned. "You know, witch, I never did tell you about where I was before all this cold madness took Lordran."

"Hold your tongue or I'll fetch someone to gag you too," she told him, trying to keep calm so that her flames would return to her as quickly as possible.

"I worked for your sister you know," he went on anyway, and at the word 'sister', Quelana snapped her head in his direction. Kirk chuckled. "Ah, there's some interest, ey? It's true. I was a Chaos Servant to your sister, Quelaan, though I only ever knew to call her 'The Fair Lady'. Pretty thing she was... like you. Yes... I used to run all over Lordran slaughtering men and women for her... collecting their precious humanity so that I may feed it to her insatiable flames." His eyes flicked to the ceiling, as if in remembrance, before falling back to Quelana's own. "The last soul she sent me to capture? Why, it was yours, witch!"

"You lie," Quelana snapped.

"Oh, no, this time I tell it true. She didn't want me to kill you, though. I imagine that would have been too good a death for the sister who abandoned her family. No, she wanted you alive. Said... said she had a 'gift' for you." He laughed again. "Oh, if only Lordran hadn't gone and started collapsing in on itself. You would have made a fine trophy to my master."

"You... you hold your tongue! That cannot be true!" Quelana roared. Can it? A voice questioned inside her. She hadn't seen any of her sisters since fleeing Izalith. She had no idea what they thought of her, in truth.

Kirk's laughter went on, louder. "She probably wanted you tortured. Ha! Her 'gift' was likely to be the sweet relief of death after you've begged for it. Begged like your mother and sisters begged for their pathetic lives when the chaos you RAN from deformed them!"

Quelana clambered to her feet, anger coursing through her so thickly she could not stop little licks of flames leaping from the tips of her fingers, and rushed to Kirk with the intention of burning him alive. The Knight of Thorns, perhaps planning to awaken her anger the whole time, had been ready though, and by the time she reached him, his hand darted forth, snatched her ankle, and pulled her to the ground. She fell in an awkward twist, still weakened from her previous spell's exertion, and Kirk easily mounted her and pinned her beneath his weight. He snarled like a mad beast as he swung the chains of his manacles up and around her head. They came down around her neck and he squeezed, choking off her air supply.

"I'm gonna die here, bitch," he whispered beside her ear. "But so are you. Can you feel that? Your precious air being taken from you? Tell me... can a flame live without oxygen? HA!"

Quelana could only reply with choked sputters from her sealed throat. She clawed desperately at the chain around her neck, but Kirk pull it tighter and her hands fell away as her mouth gaped soundlessly. She thrashed under his weight, but his armored body was far too heavy to move.

"Snuff the flame, snuff the flame, snuff the flame," Kirk whispered in a cheerful melodic way as he strangled her to death.

Black water began pooling around the edges of her vision, washing away her consciousness. Quelana clawed once more at Kirk's hands before she lacked the strength to do so and her arms fell to her sides. Her head spun, her cheeks numbed, and she had the distinct taste of smoke on her tongue: as if from a flame that had been extinguished into darkness.

When the black water came to drown her in its dark void forever, she glimpsed Lautrec appear over Kirk's shoulder, take a fistful of the man's hair to wrench his head back, and drive the butt of a sword down into the man's nose.

The chains came loose immediately, and Quelana ripped them away from her throat, pulling deep gasps of air into her oxygen-starved lungs.

Lautrec buried the sword's butt into Kirk's face again, knocking teeth from his mouth. The next strike sent streams of blood leaking from his nostrils. The next swelled his eye shut, and the final was enough to knock the Knight of Thorns unconscious.

His limp body fell splayed out at Lautrec's feet.

Quelana sat up on her elbows, still gasping for air as her eyes lifted to Lautrec's own. The grey, cold, things she'd first looked upon in Blighttown stared back at her, but, like Abby's, she saw whomever the man that lived within them once was now gone.

If she could have spoke, she would have, but her throat felt raw and chaffed and so Quelana could only nod her appreciation. His hand extended to her, she took it, and the knight pulled her to her feet. She cleared her throat and rubbed at the pain there before attempting to speak again. When she did, the word was raw and coarse and quiet. "...Abby?"

Lautrec looked to his side, as if expecting her to be there. When she wasn't he spun around towards the center of the room. Quelana stepped out from the pillar's shadow to look herself. The base of the prison tower had cleared out, Rickert and Solaire ushering the very last of them into the big, barred, room that extended beneath a stone archway beside them. In the center of the tower, Logan's machine had began spinning even more quickly, more furiously, and beneath it-walking closer and closer as if entranced-Abby approached.

"Abby!" Quelana meant to shout, but her hoarse voice came barely audible to even her own ears. She had gone three steps forward to halt the girl when an explosion CRACKED behind her so violent and sudden, both Lautrec and Quelana were thrown forward to the ground.

Chunks of rock rained down around them as a cascade of rubble slid from the gaping hole that had birthed in the tower's wall. Solaire and Rickert came rushing up beside Quelana to help her up as she stared into the dusty debris that was billowing about in a frenetic swirl because of Logan's machine. Something big was moving forward from behind the veil of dust, and when Quelana heard a growl start to rumble its anger, she spun on Solaire to warn him of what came. Her mouth opened, but now the dust had joined her wounded throat, and she could not even utter a single word.

"My lady?" Solaire questioned, taking her arm over his shoulder to steady her. "What is it?"

A crowd of curious refugees came running back into the central room to set their awestruck eyes upon the hole.

Quelana croaked a word, but it came too quiet to be heard. Solaire leaned closer to her and she tried again, this time managing to put a bit more effort behind the warning. "...wolf."

"Wolf?" Solaire echoed.

It came from the darkness of the hole it had birthed, and with it came its growling and its slobbering and all of its mad fury and hatred that she'd

seen housed in the beast's beady eyes when it was locked away in Logan's dungeon. Sif leaped through the air, a trail of loose rock sailing beneath his paws as he came, and when the mighty grey beast landed, his hulking mass of fur and muscle loomed over the entire room as he reared back on his hind quarters and howled a blood-curdling scream that trailed to the very peak of the tower above. When his front paws returned to the stone underfoot, he lunged ahead at the pack of stunned refugees. A man near the front screamed and turned to scramble away. He'd made it not two steps when the wolf's enormous jaws closed shut around his leg. Sif jerked its head, and the leg went sailing across the room; the owner left staring in horror at his deformity. His suffering did not last long. The beast's jaw clamped on his body, thrashed him about like a ragdoll, and ended him with a final slam to the ground.

"Praise the Sun..." Solaire muttered, scrambling to unsheath his sword.

The black skin above the wolf's muzzle curled away, revealing a forest of white daggers beneath, pointed and dripping with drool. It snapped at the air, bellowing a ferocious roar and sending a wave of foul-smelling breath forth.

Tarkus and Rhea emerged from the barred room-Tarkus' side now stitched shut-and the two of them wore matching expressions of horror upon glimpsing the giant beast that now dominated the room alongside Logan's machine. Quelana's eyes moved from them to the stairs, where her lava had dissipated to leave a clear path for the hollows to continue their assault, and finally back to Abby, who seemed to be the one person in the castle who was uninterested in Sif. The girl was standing just outside the machine's twisting orb of parts, and Quelana saw her hands were wrapped around a lever there at the base.

Sif's roar commanded her attention back his way. The wolf was shifting its paws around to send the beast's snout in a vigilant circle as it eyed down potential attackers. Tarkus had taken up his greatsword and tried getting at the thing's flank, but Sif whipped his head around to snap at the big man and keep him at bay. Solaire moved in behind the creature, straight sword drawn, as Rhea and Rickert spread out in attempt to pull the monster's gaze their way. The vacant look had returned to Lautrec's eyes, but when Quelana stepped beside him and sent a lick of flame before his eyes, he raised his head as if waking from a dream. His focus moved to the wolf and Quelana saw, with some sense of relief, his hand wrapped the hilt of his sword and he pressed in with the others to join the attack. Quelana herself kept a watchful eye on the thing as she shuffled towards Abby.

The hollows were halfway to the base of the stairs.

The wolf launched into an arching sweep of its enormous body in attempt to stave off the five brave enough to encircle it. Sif landed, but too close to Solaire's sword, which he promptly jabbed at the beast's hind leg. Sif

pulled away, spun, and drove its snout into the Knight of Sunlight. Solaire got his shield up, but the force of the blow was enough to send him rocking back on his heels. Tarkus roared a warcry and pressed in to swing his massive sword into Sif's side, but the wolf hopped with surprise deftness to its side, avoiding the blow. Rickert sent a bolt of magic forth from the half-a-catalyst he had left. The spell slapped the wolf's shoulder, but the attack only seemed to rile its fury. When it launched for Rickert, Rhea stepped forth and cast a miracle that sent blinding light into the wolf's face. Sif roared and buried its snout beneath its paw to shield its eyes. Lautrec seized the opportunity to jab the tip of his blade into the wolf's paw. It pierced the flesh there, and a spray of blood inked the wofl's grey fur. Sif howled in anguish and closed its jaw around the sword as Lautrec made to pull back. It yanked it from his hand, but when the creature moved in for the kill, Quelana cast a pillar of flame upon it, searing its snout and sending the wolf leaping away. She turned back to Abby.

"Abby!" She shouted, rushing beside the girl. "What are you doing!?"

"It's not fully turned on, Quelana! Look!" She said, pointing at the lever. "Help me!"

Quelana saw the girl had the right of it: the lever was shifted around the base of the construction in a long groove, but there was still room for it to be wedged deeper. "Why do you want to turn it on!?" She shouted to be heard over both the machine's rumbling as well as the giant wolf's.

"Look!" Abby said, pointing to the stairs, where the hollows had just reached the end. "We will all die down here! We need to try something, don't we!? Help me! Turn Logan's machine on and let us see what it does!"

Quelana held Abby's eyes. There was no madness in them as there had been in the days past, of that she was sure, but there was a wildness there, perhaps the sort of daring exuberance that only youth could truly obtain. She glanced back towards the fight. Tarkus had worked his way beneath the wolf's belly, and was taking desperate stabs up to the creature's underside. Sif was shifting about, snapping at the big man's limbs, but Rhea had moved closer and was sending miracle after miracle of blinding light to keep the creature dazed and Tarkus safe. Lautrec, without a sword any longer, stood watching from outside the fray. "Lautrec!" Quelana called after him, and when he did not turn, raised her voice even further. "LAUTREC!"

He turned, and she waved him over. When the knight had joined beside them, Quelana told him of Abby's idea, and though he spoke no reply, his nod was enough to let them know he agreed with it. Abby returned the gesture before looking to Quelana for approval.

"Alright, Abby..." she began. "Let's turn it on."

Abby licked at her lips eagerly and set her eyes upon the lever. Her small hands wrapped it. Quelana joined her own beneath them. Lautrec's eyes flicked between the two of them. He hesitated only briefly before stepping forth and joining. With that, Quelana and Abby began to pull, Lautrec digging in on his side to push, and the lever began, slowly, to turn. Lautrec's arms tensed beneath his leathers as his face reddened with exertion. Quelana fought desperately to keep her hands on the wooden thing as she and Abby leaned their weight back to move it.

The hollows flooded the base of the tower. Rickert pulled loose a dagger and rushed to Rhea's side to fend the decaying things off as Tarkus wrestled with Sif. Solaire was positioned perfectly between the machine and the wolf, and when he must have heard Abby shout with a harsh pull on the lever, his gaze found them. He looked upon the three of them as if they were mad, huddled there beneath the unstable swirling chaos of Logan's machine, but after a moment, his feet began carrying him closer. When he neared and saw their struggles, the Knight of Sunlight looked to each of them in turn, sheathed his sword, and joined their efforts beside Lautrec

With the knight's added strength, the four of them started moving at a faster pace; the lever buried in the fall of their fingers and knuckles and palms groaning and screeching as the metal plating it connected with lurched across a web of mechanisms beneath. Something overhead crackled, and Quelana stole a glance upwards to see the spinning bits had raced to such a maddening momentum, bolts of blue lightning had started lashing at the air around the golden orb, as if some otherworldly storm had been conjured from within. Both Solaire and Lautrec fell forward as the last bit of gap in the lever's path was slotted over, and the machine was turned fully on. The sound of the towering monstrosity had grown so deafening, when Abby shouted beside her, the words were as silent as if they hadn't been spoken at all. Quelana took hold of the girl's arm and dragged her away to give the machine a wide birth before it erupted.

Wind came then so furious, Quelana's black hair was sent wildly spinning before her face. She clawed it from her eyes to see both Lautrec and Solaire moving alongside them, their backs turned so they could watch the machine spin. At the stairs, the great grey wolf had calmed itself, and even its eyes were held in the center of the room. The hollows had halted their attack. Tarkus, Rhea, and Rickert stumbled forth, shielding their eyes as blue and gold light took the tower in flashes. At Quelana's rear, she saw refugees had began to come stumbling out of the barred room as if waking from of a dream; every one of their eyes upturned to the machine; every one of their mouth's gaping. They began to clutch on to one another, perhaps in fear, perhaps in wonder.

Blue lightning crackled out of the machine's core, spiraling up towards the tower ceiling above. The bronze bar was moving so fast around its outer edge now, it no longer only looked like a golden orb, it had become

one. The wind it generated rose so fiercely, every one of Logan's documents and books and ledgers and scrolls were sucked up into the air in a blizzard of swirling papers. Sif backed into the wall at its hind quarters whimpering; the beast's fur looking ready to rip right from its skin. Another shot of lightning reached its jagged arm to the ground. It collided with the stone, sending a spray of rock from the impact and leaving a scorched-black circle in its wake. More lightning lashed out around the orb in every direction, reached halfway to the curved walls of the tower, and pulled back in on itself. The blue ripples did not fade, however, they grew and began encasing the spinning orb entirely; faster and faster and faster until it appeared as if a globe housed a pool of water.

From the liquid-like coating that now wrapped the machine's core, vague but colorful shapes began to take form. Quelana's breath caught in her chest as she, alongside every living soul beside her, stood transfixed upon the images that bubbled to the surface. At first, whatever the machine was revealing was far too obscured to make out, but as it spun on, picking up speed and wind and volume, they formed.

She watched an orange and red blob grow in detail until it looked like some flame-covered giant, thrashing its claws furiously at the air around it as it lurked in a forest of stone pillars. Another, darker, blob grew spears from its sides, as if it were made up of a line of soldiers in phalanx- formation. Something fat and round wobbled up out of the pits of a stone basin with a massive, pink, tongue lashing around its body. A knight clad in heavy armor and wielding a shield and sword stepped from a fog, but when Quelana narrowed her eyes upon the thing's feet, she saw it was no mere man, but a giant who stood looming over an entire castle. A tunnel rippled from the machine's core, at the end of which, a long-legged enormous spider came rushing up from a mineshaft to screech and claw towards them.

The images began appearing and fading even quicker as the machine wobbled and bowed as if ready to burst. A floating sorceress hovered in an abandoned church, flanked by mirror-images of herself drifting between the pews. A dragon clawed its way up from, perhaps, Izalith itself to breath flames so furiously, Quelana could only think that this beast was, perhaps, the Godof all dragons. A pair of twin Gargoyles descended upon a stone tower's parapets, their eyes glowing like beacons of flame in their heads.

The demons and beasts and creatures flashed in the machine's core in an instant, and when they had gone, a woman took their place. A maiden in black robes, barefoot, her eyes sealed over with dark grey bandages. Though she clearly could not see, her head snapped to the surface of the machine, as if she were looking out at Quelana and the rest as they stood looking in at her. The maiden's head cocked on its side and she raised a hand forward as if to push herself right out of whatever otherworldly prison the machine housed and into Lordran itself.

Something snapped.

A piece of the machine flung free, colliding with the prison tower's wall so severely, it planted itself in a crater there. The image faded, and with it, the maiden in black. Blue lightning broke apart to begin clawing wildly at the air around the orb again. Another piece cracked loose and went ricocheting up into the tower's upper levels. Then, the prison tower itself began to tremble, and Quelana lifted her gaze to see stones were shaking loose from the walls to come crashing down in a storm of bricks and debris. She was only vaguely aware Lautrec was beside her til his hand wrapped her waist and pulled.

She turned to see the crowd of refugees and soldiers, of men and women and children, of knights and sorcerers and clerics, had united in a wave of terror-stricken faces and soundless screams beneath the machine's wailing. Quelana's eyes filled with light from the tower's core and something exploded so loudly, she swore it had deafened her completely.

Then Lautrec was throwing her to the ground as the tower came down around them.

-o-o-o-

When it was over, the hollows were gone, the wolf was buried in a pile of rubble, presumably dead, and those left living were choked in a swarm of dust and debris so thickly laid around them, the only sound that remained in the castle seemed to be that of fits of coughing and gagging. Quelana wrestled to her feet, her eyes sweeping the crowd of downed men and women to find Abby rising up with Solaire's aid. Tarkus, Rhea, Rickert... they had all made it as well. In fact, nearly everyone who had fled to the room outside the machine seemed to have lived through the explosion. Thanks the Gods for that, Quelana thought as Lautrec rose beside her. His eyes were fixed into the dusty pit of destruction that had been Logan's chambers, but only ruin lied that way, and soon enough, he turned from it.

No one spoke to one another. Perhaps it was the shock from what they had lived through. Perhaps Logan's machine had burned too frightening an image in their minds to give their tongues freedom to yet move. Perhaps, like Quelana herself, they only wanted to be rid of the place once and for all. Whatever it was, no one looked ready to speak about what they'd seen in the swirl of Logan's lightning-laced orb. Quelana could not blame them; she was staving off the thought of it herself, lest it turn her mad. Blue lightning, a voice threatened to remind her of the madness she'd glimpsed. Blue lighting, blue lightning, blue lightning.

She forced the thought from her head and turned to find the bookshelf that once housed Logan's hidden passage to the dungeons beyond

knocked aside; the tunnel beyond standing in wait. If it hadn't, they likely would have all died there, trapped in the base of the prison tower to starve out the remainder of their days.

Crawling over a spill of chipped stone, Quelana moved to the tunnel, stood beside it, and raised her arm over her head to command a lick of flame to the air. The dazed eyes of the survivors found her, and without waiting for their acquiescence, she turned and led the way outside to the gardens. Soon enough, she heard their feet following along behind her.

The gardens outside were as deserted as the prison tower had been. If Priscilla had told it true earlier about the shellfish creatures, whatever Logan's machine had stirred up had sent them back to their caves. Across the snowy slope of the garden, and beyond a thicket of trees, a section of stone had been torn asunder from the Archive's outer wall. Beyond, Quelana could see the hillside that would carry them back towards Anor Londo, and once again, she did not ask for approval or aid, only walked on, leading them across the heavy snows underfoot towards the broken sect of wall.

Abby fell in beside her, and the two walked silently on for awhile until they passed a bloody and battered corpse lying half-buried in the snows. "Chester," Abby said, staring upon the corpse with an unwavering look in her eye. "I killed him."

Quelana nodded, but there did not seem to be any words worth exchanging over the confession, and so she only took Abby's arm in her own and walked on.

They were the first two to reach the battered outer wall, and standing at the crest of the hill that sloped up to meet their feet, Quelana could see a group of men and women awaiting them across the hill and around the bend at Anor Londo's great, upper, wall. The falling snows obscured the distant group, but when Quelana squinted, she could have sworn Patches stood among their ranks. She waited, then, for both Solaire and Lautrec to fall in beside her before moving on, watching as each of their eyes found the rogue group for themselves. A look of interest took the Knight of Sunlight, but Lautrec only lowered his head and marched forth, as if the very act of walking was a burden to him.

The rest of the survivors came pouring out into the gardens behind her, hands clutched together as if holding dear to the person next to them would keep them from drifting away. Quelana pulled a breath of crisp air and looked East to the sun rising up over the mountains. Abby's arm wrapped her own, and Quelana forced a smile upon the girl as they went trudging down the slope of the hill, leaving the Duke's Archives behind. Leaving it behind forever, Quelana hoped.

When the stream of survivors, led at its tip by Solaire and Lautrec, traversed the hill and clambered down the rocky fall of cliff that led back

out to the Archives' main tunnel, they were quick to press on beneath the twist of stairs that wound back to Anor Londo's upper wall, perhaps the rest of them just as eager to be rid of the nightmare that was the Duke's Archives as Quelana herself.

They walked on beneath the high-ceilinged chamber that divided the two sections of Lordran-the massive statue of a hammer-wielding brute still standing tall within-and passed beneath its arched doorway. The rogue group were waiting a bit further on in the snows, nothing at their backs and sides to protect them. That means they're friendly, Quelana thought with some semblance of hope rising in her.

As they neared, she saw Patches was in fact amongst them. The merchant, Domhnall, too. And when Solaire finally raised an arm to give halt to their progress, Quelana spotted a bearded young man in dark leathers that she recognized after a moment as Benjamin. What are they all doing together? She wondered. Her eyes moved to Abby beside her and saw the girl was staring fiercely forward at Ben. The young man who'd been rescued so long ago by Lautrec and herself, alongside Abby from the Asylum, was doing the same in her direction.

Neither group spoke until the Archives' last few straggling survivors had bunched up at the rear. Tarkus came marching forward, his greatsword clutched at the hilt in his meaty hands as he eyed up the new group. Rickert and Rhea were not far behind. It was Patches, though, who was the first to speak. The bald man sauntered ahead of his group, grinning and spreading his arms wide to his sides. "Ladies and gentleman, survivors of the greatest assault Lordran has ever seen, I present to you your savior, your hero, and your Chosen," he said, bowing and stepping to the side to present Ben.

A rumbling of confusion spread through the crowd as Ben stood before them, his dark eyes sweeping their numbers. Quelana watched him, and saw, like Abby, the innocence he'd had when Lautrec had taken him from the Undead Asylum was all but gone, and only the hardened face of a man remained beneath his shaggy beard. The two of them have shed their youthful skins, Quelana thought, glancing between them. But who are the young man and young woman left in their place?

"What is this nonsense you speak of?" Solaire called across the gap.

"Nonsense?" Patches echoed. "You'd best watch your tongue, Sun Warrior. You stand in the presence of the man who just saved all of your lives. Show some gratitude."

Tarkus marched across the gap between the two groups, his massive shadow falling upon the Hyena's face and robbing it of its confidence. "You'd better start explaining yourself, friend. Let's see if you talk quicker than my greatsword here."

A older, muscle-bound, man with a mane of grey hair moved before Tarkus, and Quelana saw, with some astonishment, he might have been the only man in Lordran who actually could stand toe-to-toe with the giant and not looking puny in comparison. "Stand down, fella," he growled. "Yer out of line. This man speaks it true. Show 'em the corpse."

Domhnall and a heavy-set man lifted something off the snows at the group's rear. They dragged it forth as their fellowship parted down the middle to form a path. They shoved it forward. It was the body of a man, or perhaps a woman, in silk robes and sandals, a crown atop his or her head, and a pool of dried blood clotting the corpse's mouth and nose. Abby gasped and brought her hands to her mouth. "...him," she whispered.

Solaire stared upon the lifeless thing for a moment before turning his gaze on Patches and the others. "What is this supposed to be?"

"That there is the fella' that was leadin' them hollows!" The grey-maned man bellowed.

"Ben here killed him," Patches added, his grin returning despite Tarkus' massive figure beside him. "And when he did, the hollows tucked tail and hauled their sorry, rotting, asses back to Anor Londo."

"I'm afraid not. It was Abby's idea to turn on Logan's machine," Solaire explained. "It was the girl's plan that saved us, not some boy killing this... thing," he said, gesturing to the corpse between them. "The moment the machine came alive, the hollow halted their attack."

"Piss on that!" Patches shouted. "That's a bloody lie! I seen the hollows stop! It wasn't until Ben murdered the Dark Sun Gwyndolin, leader of the Blade of the Darkmoon, and the last remaining God in Lordran... well, was the last remaining God, at least, until Ben here killed him. That's right. The Chosen here is a God-slayer! Show him your respect and admiration! He saved your bloody lives!"

"He did not save our lives and he is not the Chosen," Quelana spoke up, pulling all eyes her way. She swallowed, collecting herself under their pressure, and went on. "Abby is the Chosen. You all know that."

"Gods, you still travel with the witch!?" Patches snapped. "Are you all as mad as Havel the Rock? She's not even human, you fools! Don't let her deceptions poison your minds! She stands among you now, but when the time comes she will cast her spells upon you and turn you into slaves of Izalith. It was her bloody mother's fault that all the world's demons came crawling up to destroy mankind in the first place!"

"You will not speak of Lady Quelana in that manner again," Solaire warned Patches, unsheathing his straight sword. "I stood beside her, fought beside her. I saw her courage and compassion for our kind first hand!"

"Tricks. Deceptions," Patches said. "Cut her serpent's tongue from her

mouth or slit her throat. Don't, and you'll all be her slave soon enough. As I nearly was."

Quelana narrowed her eyes furiously on the Hyena. "I watched this man stab Lautrec, Knight of Carim, the man who just fought beside you all to save your lives, in the back and throw him from a bridge! If you are looking to outcast someone, it is him you should look to."

"I didn't kill Lautrec," Patches said. "In fact, I think I see him standing right there. Hee-hee. I saved all our lives on the bridge that day, his included. His mad plan was to hole up and wait for Chester and Kirk to starve us out. I did everyone a favor and put that plan to bed. I stabbed him in the side not the stomach, not the throat. I put my blade in the one place he might live from." Patches craned his head back to find Lautrec. "You can thank me later, old buddy."

Quelana turned to Lautrec, but the man's eyes were not on Patches nor herself, they were on Anastacia, who had joined the group at the rear of the pack and was nervously scrunching the hem of her robe in her hands. Lautrec's fingers were rubbing against each other and she could see his teeth gritting beneath the line of his jaw, stirring some clandestine hatred within. She went to him, stepped in the line of sight of the man's sister, and forced his eyes upon her instead. "No," she told him with a shake of her head. "Not after all you've been through. Please."

"Knight Lautrec!" A woman's voice called from from Patches' group. Quelana looked to see a tall, broad-shoulder, woman lumbering forward, a dusting of freckles on her face beneath an unkempt fall of mousy brown hair. She shouldered her way into their group, apparently not worried in the slightest, and stepped beside Lautrec. "Knight Lautrec, what have you found? My father..." hey eyes flitted around the crowd in wild movements, searching. "I don't see him. Please, knight. Siegmeyer, my father... did you learn anything?"

Lautrec, never one for subtlety since Quelana had first encountered him in Blighttown, lifted his gaze to her and spoke for the first time since the event with Anastacia. "Your father is dead, Sieglinde."

The woman's face scrunched up in agony. "...n-no..." she pleaded. "You... you lie..."

"He's dead," Lautrec confirmed. The knight reached to his hip and unsheathed his sword. He laid it in the woman's open palm and used his hands to close her fingers over its hilt. "Vengeance is, perhaps, a man or woman's most dangerous road to travel," he said, his eyes flicking briefly to Quelana's. "It is best to deal with it quickly... lest it consume you... lest it destroy you."

Sieglinde swiped tears from her cheek. "What? I... I don't understand...?"

Lautrec moved back into the crowd, men and women parting to scramble out of his path, and came upon the Knight of Thorns, still shackled; his face bloody and battered from Lautrec's earlier beating. Lautrec took the man firmly by the arm and, despite Kirk's feeble attempts to writhe free, marched him up before Sieglinde. Lautrec's boot took the back of Kirk's leg, collapsing him to his knees before the woman. "Here is your father's killer. His life is yours now."

Kirk's eyes widened on Sieglinde's. He tried speaking some protest, but Lautrec's attack earlier had likely broke his jaw, and only mumbled nonsense came spilling from his thick lips.

Sieglinde's anger replaced her sorrow. The woman's face turned red. Her arms trembled. Her knuckles went white around the hilt of her blade. She hoisted the sword Lautrec had handed her to her broad shoulder and strode forward.

Kirk desperately shook his head one last time before Sieglinde's slash removed it from his neck.

The severed head rolled to a halt in the snows beside Kirk's body, and shortly after, the bodyfell as well, and the Knight of Thorns was no more.

Sieglinde spit on his corpse, but with the task of vengeance completed, her sorrow returned and she broke into deep sobs. The grey-maned man rushed forward and took her in his enormous arms, stroking at her hair and whispering comforting words in her ear.

"Rhea!" The heavy-set man from the opposed group called and he lumbered forward as well. "Nico's gone, too."

The priestess went to him and allowed his head to fall upon her shoulder. "Nico's dead?" Rhea asked, her comely face lining with sympathy. "Oh, poor Vincent. Shhhh, there now. It's alright."

After that, whatever tension remained between the two groups seemed to dissipate. They merged together, though Ben and Abby kept their distance, their eyes still locked on one another's, and Patches made sure to avoid both Lautrec and Quelana. Solaire and Takrus got to talking with Andre-Quelana was beginning to piece together names from her position outside the circle-and Domhnall, and soon enough, the four were chatting as if they weren't nearly prepared to go to battle with one another moment's earlier.

"You're Solaire?" She heard Benjamin speak up into the group.  
The men turned on him and Solaire nodded his head. "I am, young man." "He said your name," Ben told the knight.  
Solaire frowned. "Oh whom do you speak, son? Who said my name?"

"Gwyndolin. When I killed him... he croaked one last word before he died. I'm fairly certain it was your name. 'Solaire'."

The Knight of Sunlight's frown deepened as the group's attention fell upon him. "Well, I- I do not know why that would be... perhaps you are mistaken? Perhaps it only sounded like-"

"I'm not," Ben cut him off, and Quelana heard a cockiness in his voice that had not been there when she last saw him at the Burg. Patches influence, most likely, she thought.

"Why would he say my name?" Solaire asked. "It makes no sense. I did not know the man, nor his covenant. He, certainly, did not know me."

Ben shrugged. "I heard what I heard."  
"And I'm telling you, boy, you heard wrong," Solaire insisted.

"Don't call your savior 'boy'," said Patches. "Weren't for him, you'd be picking the hollows spears out of your asses as we speak."

"I'm still not convinced he's my 'savior', sir," Solaire replied.

"It is true, knight," Andre said. "Ben walked into that Gwyndolin fella's little carriage, and when he walked out with the man's corpse, the hollows halted. They stood there all frozen and confused lookin' fer a moment. Then they started the march back to the city."

"How did you kill Gwyndolin anyway," Quelana piped up from outside the circle.

Ben's dark eyes found her and narrowed. "What does that matter? He attacked me so I strangled him."

"Why is there blood on his nose and mouth?" She asked.

Ben shrugged. "Guess that means I hit him in the nose or mouth," he replied.

"The hollows are back in Anor Londo, ey?" Tarkus interjected, casting his gaze to the North, where the city lay quiet and dormant below the morning sun. "Cowards."

"Yes, but for how long do they stay in retreat?" Solaire questioned.

"I'm freezin' my damned arse off up here," Andre growled. "Why don't we have this little talk somewhere warmer." The man's eyes moved to the Archives. "S'ppose that there castle is out of the question. Looks like the whole damned thing came down on top of yas. We can return to the Undead Parish. We got a church set up there. Well fortified. Food. Water. Most important, the young ones, whom I'm sure some of their parents are among your group back there."

"Very good," Solaire said. "Perhaps it would be for the best. I'm not entirely comfortable standing outside a city of hollows myself."

"And say we all gather up like one, big, happy family in your little church," Tarkus began. "What then? What are we supposed to do now? Logan's machine was... some kind of... illusion. It did nothing."

"It stopped the hollows," Solaire pointed out.

"No it didn't," Patches was quick to correct. "Ben did."

Rhea moved beside the group and cleared her throat, pulling their attention her way. "I, well, am not certain about what stopped the hollows, but, well, I believe we should continue on the Path my friend Nico had laid before us. A pilgrimage. To the Great Hollow beneath Lordran... and to the Eternal Dragon to receive his judgement and, well, perhaps-."

"Piss on that," Patches growled.

"For once, I can agree with the Hyena," Tarkus added. "I'm not going to see no dragon."

Rhea frowned. "B-but-"

"We have the Chosen here, woman," Patches cut her off, laying a hand on Ben. "We get him to Gwyn and we let him save Lordran. As it should be. End of story."

Quelana glanced to Abby, but the girl appeared intent on holding her tongue. Quelana's gaze fell further back to Lautrec, wishing he'd say something and show some of that fiery command that he had displayed so abundantly in the early days of their travels, but Lautrec only stared listlessly upon his own boots, apparently disinterested in the conversation entirely.

"A man comes from the Archives!" Laurentius shouted from the crowd, and every eye turned back to path of ruin that led from the castle to the city.

Upon it, a single man was running forward from the crumbling castle walls, heading in their direction.

"What in Izalith?" Solaire questioned. "Who is that?"

They didn't have to wait long for the answer. The man came sprinting up to them, gasping for air and swiping sweat from his brow. As he neared, Quelana saw it was, in fact, a dead man.

"That's Griggs! Laurentius shouted.

"The sorcerer?" Solaire questioned. "The one who murdered all the firekeepers?"

"He didn't murder them," Quelana informed him. "It was Logan who killed them. Griggs only took the fall. I came upon him locked away in Logan's dungeon. He wrote his story down for me and it seemed true enough. But... the last time I saw him... I could have sworn he was dead."

"Don't look dead to me," Patches added from behind them.

Griggs came running up to the group, his eyes moving from person to person, his lips lifting in a smile as he nodded enthusiastically.

"He has no tongue," Quelana explained. "Logan cut it from his mouth so he could not tell of the mad sorcerer's treacheries." She narrowed his eyes upon him, however, and could not help an odd feeling steal across her. There was something... strange about the man. And she had been so certain he wasn't breathing when she'd rescued Anastacia from his cell. Griggs' eyes moved to Ben and the man's queer smile broadened as he stared upon the boy. Ben grimaced and looked away.

"Well, one more survivor is one more able-bodied man to work and defend should the hollows collect themselves and retaliate," Solaire said. "Praise the Sun for that."

"Can we go?" Andre growled. "I've had enough of this damned city to last me another lifetime or two. We got ropes strung up leading down off the wall back towards Sen's Fortress. We can get through that way... going won't be easy, but... you don't look like you got too many injured in yer ranks. They'll make it. Probably."

A smattering of agreement coursed through the two groups and just when they were readying to join and move, Rickert halted them by stepping out towards the city and shouting, "Wait!"

All eyes fell on the young man.

"You'd best be keepin' me from a warm meal fer a good reason, boy," Andre snapped.

When Rickert turned to face them, Quelana saw the most genuine smile she'd ever seen plastered to his face. He looked from person to person, nodding his head exuberantly. "Don't you feel it? Ray! Come here!"

Rhea furrowed her brow, but walked beside him anyway. Rickert took her by the shoulders and threw his head back in laughter.

"A shame Rickert there survived the hollow only to lose his mind," Tarkus said, a laugh escaping his own lips.

"I feel it..." Abby said, a smile rising up her face. "He's right. Quelana, he's right!"

"What are you two-" Quelana began.

Abby stuck her hand out between them, palm up. Quelana looked to it, and for a moment, nothing happened. Then a circle of water formed upon it. And another. And another.

"Water?" Quelana asked.

"Not just water," Tarkus began, a look of almost childish wonder rising up his face. "Rain!" he bellowed. He lifted his eyes skywards and cheered. "Gods be good! I'm not cold!"

Solaire watched as raindrops fell to his brow. The Knight of Sunlight grinned. "Can this be...?"

"AH-HAAAA!" Rickert cheered, hoisting Rhea into his arms and spinning the laughing priestess in a circle. "It's over! Bloody hell! IT'S OVER!"

And just like that, the falling snows tapered off, and the rain began as the air started to warm around them. An excited roar of chatter moved through the survivors like a wave, and then people were laughing and raising their hands skyward as the rain fell upon them and The Great Cold that had held Lordran in its icy grip for so long... was no more. Thunder rumbled above the distant peaks of the East, and the showers picked up, and soon enough, it was coming down so heavily, Anor Londo's wall came alive with the pattering of a thousand raindrops. Men lurched from the crowd, stripping their heavy coats and cloaks to lay there heads back and collect rain on their faces. The children scurried out from their mother's skirts and clapped their hands, stomping about in the melting snows at their feet. Solaire and Tarkus looked to each other and laughed. Can this be true or is it just another illusion? Quelana wondered, but as the weather warmed and warmed, and the rain fell and fell, her doubts were slowly but surely removed. Something had changed - truly, wonderfully, changed. Perhaps it was Logan's machine's purpose after all to save Lordran in the end, or perhaps it was as Patches said and Ben's murder of Gwyndolin had steered the Gods' plan in another direction. For the first time in a very long time, a hearty smile took Quelana's face as she cupped her hands to collect rain water. She turned her smile on Lautrec-

-and the knight's somber expression stole her joy. His eyes were held on the East, where the dark, purple, clouds of the storm were still moving their way, and as Quelana looked to them herself, she thought she knew why Lautrec was not happy, and a hopeless feeling stole across her so fiercely, she felt like collapsing.

Because we've ended one disaster, she thought. But perhaps started another. The clouds drifted forward ominously, a queer twist of light and smoke boiling at their bellies, and the distant sounds of roaring thunder growing more and more severe as it approached. She glanced to Ben and Abby: the boy, seemingly the only other one atop the wall without a smile on his face, and the Abby's own smile fading as she looked upon her counterpart. They stared at each other so intensely, Quelana thought that

perhaps one were trying to read the others' thoughts.

The cold is over, Quelana realized. But what changes will come to this strange, new, Lordran of ours now? This mad world where two Chosen roam, and Logan's machine birthed, perhaps, a portal to some other world? Quelana watched as a streak of lightning took the Eastern mountain tops. It was too distant to tell, but perhaps the lightning was not yellow... perhaps it was blue.

Our era of cold has ended, Quelana thought. ...and now our storm begins. 


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 39

Beneath the belly of his lantern, the flames cast their warm glow on the narrow walkways of old moss and older stone underfoot, and Ingward made sure each of his steps was more carefully placed than the last, so as not to slip and plummet to the darkness that awaited him below. His legs were old, and all bundled up in his heavy, crimson, robes, they were like to betray him if he attempted to hasten his pace, and so not only did he move cautiously, but slowly as well. Speed is for the young, Ingward thought, stepping around a crumbled section of bridge. And among all the things you've become over the years, old boy, young is not one of them.

The lantern swayed as his hips shifted around an overgrown mound of moss, and the light splashed out, briefly, to paint the waters below in its incandescence. Night had fallen on the ruins of New Londo-Though has it every truly been day here? Ingward thought-and the black lakes below, dotted now with falling drops of rain, sloshed about beneath the light, looking not entirely unlike a river of ink, waiting to swallow up anything foolish enough to come near to it. Ingward pried his eyes from the waiting waters and continued on, refusing to let his fears turn him back.

Overhead, thunder rumbled across the peaks in the East, and lightning scratched it way down to the earth. The outline of New Londo took shape against the bolt: a jagged horizon of towers and keeps and buildings, all in ruins, all abandoned, and all as dark and ominous as the waters below. Ingward pulled his robes tighter around him, adjusting his sealer's mask beneath his hood to better see the way forward. Rainwater trickled down to pool at the mask's eyes. Ingward swiped it away.

The walkway curved to break into a haggard fall of stone steps that twisted around a keep, bringing him closer still to those sloshing pools of ebony waves. Ingward descended them as warily as he had the first time setting foot upon them when he was just a young man years and years past. How naive you were then, old boy, he thought. And if you and your brothers had known then what you know now... would you still have given up your lives to atone for those who were sacrificed when the darkness beneath was sealed away? Would you have still taken the Oath if you'd known it meant an eternity of servitude? If Ingward dwelled on that question now, as he had many, many, days and nights past, the answer might be enough to turn him back, and so he cast the thought aside and pressed onwards.

By the time he'd climbed up and down the ruins' many stairs, traversed the narrow walkways that wrapped the towers and keeps, and descended to New Londo's lower section, where black water splashed up to soak his boots, Ingward was huffing and puffing and peeling back his mask to dab the sweat from his wrinkled brow. He was leaned against a fall of rock and moss, awaiting his wind to return to him, when the voice spoke.

"Guardian of the Seal," it hissed from some hidden shadow; a thick, slimy, voice that was as mysterious and queer as the creature it belonged to. Ingward turned to spot the beast, but his eyes fell only upon the bony finger of stone jutting up from the darkness around it that was the last remnants of the abyss, and of the four kings. He had watched as the Chosen traversed down into that very tower with a ring that gifted him the ability to enter the abyss... and live through it to return. But that was a long time past, now, and that Chosen was dead and gone, and only Ingward remained to keep vigil over the dark.

"Well, come and show yourself then, serpent," he said, trying to put some courage into his command, despite the chill that had taken his spine.

"Did you bring it?" The voice croaked.

Ingward reached into his robes and fished out the key. He still could not spot the source of the voice, so he simply held the key out before him and jingled it against its ring. "I brought it... now you tell me what it is you want with it. And with me? I tire of hearing your whispers in my dreams, serpent. I do not serve you. I serve Lordran."

"Then our master is the same," it hissed.

Ingward stood in the oppressive silence that followed the serpent's tongue, only the quiet smattering of raindrops stirring the waters below and the occasional rumble of distant thunder clashing to break the quiet. He swallowed, clutched more dearly to the key in his hand, and made his feet carry him nearer to the tower before asking, "...is this about the 'cycle'?"

The water at his right rose, and for one mad moment, Ingward though the inky stuff had finally come alive to reach for him, seal shut his lungs, and pull him under forever. But as he held his widened-eyes upon the terror, his breath caught in his chest, he saw it was, in fact, not the water that was rising, but something beneath it. A shadowy figure, tall as a mighty oak tree and just as wide, came ripping up from the surface to tower over Ingward and the walkway he stood upon. It swayed side to side, shaking loose the dampness that clung to its leathery skin, and when it was done, two great big eyes stared down at him from the thing's head.

"Kaathe," Ingward greeted the mighty, Primordial, serpent, his breath returning to him now that he could look upon the creature with his own two eyes.

"Sealer," the serpent returned with a bow of its head that sent more water to trickle down around Ingward's feet.

"What is it you want, Darkstalker?" Ingward asked, wasting no time with formalities. He had no interest in being down in the ruins' lower levels any longer than he had to. "You're serpent's tongue has been in my ear for

the last two weeks and I cannot bear it any longer, so tell it true and tell it plain. What is it you want?"

"Your kind has grown unruly, Sealer," Kaathe answered. "This storm that has replaced the cold... it is the result of their careless actions."

Ingward looked to the East, where purple clouds swirled to give birth to a ferocious storm at their bellies. As if in response to the creature's claim, a web of lightning raced through the black skies. He returned his eyes to Kaathe's and sighed. "Coldness and storms... what concern is this to you or I, serpent?"

"Gwyndolin is dead," Kaathe hissed. "As dead as his sweet sister, Gwynevere. It appears as if the old man's children are dropping off left and right these days. Whatever mad siege the Dark Sun laid upon the humans and their precious castle has failed, perished, and the Dark Sun perished alongside it. The humans live, and, as I said, they have grown far too unruly for their own good."

"The boy and the girl... the 'Chosen'?" Ingward questioned. He still had a hard time coming to terms with the notion that Lordran had birthed two new Chosen Undead in the wake of the first's failures.

"Alive," Kaathe answered. "Thank the creators for that. If they had perished... well, it would certainly have been the end of you and I, Sealer. Perhaps all of Lordran."

"But they do live. So why are we having this conversation?"

The Primordial Serpent leaned forth to lower its head nearer to Ingward. "Because while Gwyndolin and Gwynever are gone, the threat of their existence extinguished, the larger threat still looms. Their sibling. Gwyn's firstborn. The firstborn has joined itself with the humans, wherever those troublesome little parasites reside now, and if, somehow, they discover what the firstborn can do..."

"I see," Ingward said. "...this is as close as its ever been then, isn't it? The end, that is."

Kaathe nodded its massive head. "Yes. If the Lordvessel is filled once more and the humans and the heathen of a God that walks among them enter the Kiln... and our new pair of Chosen don't settle matters with Gwyn themselves... it is over."

"Unfortunate," Ingward admitted. "But, once again, what concern is it of mine? It is not my place to mingle in the affairs of my fellow man. My place is here, to atone for what we did to stop the abyss."

"And you have served your purpose well," Kaathe admitted. "But now, unfortunately, you must atone for the sins of your kind once again. And release the second seal."

Ingward's mouth fell agape beneath his mask. He stared incredulously up at the serpent before him, but Kaathe only grinned its grin and stared right back, unwavering. "Release the second seal?" Ingward echoed. "...and give you the power to unleash your demons upon Lordran?"

"This 'power' will not be mine alone. As it is of all things, my brethren and I share the responsibilities and duties of the cycle. We exist only to aid it, and see to its continuation. Ours is not a life of power. It is one of servitude. As is yours, Sealer. You should be able to empathize."

"I'd be handing you over your own personal army," Ingward snapped. "Do you take me for a fool?"

"I take you for a man who knows the importance of that which we serve. But... I understand your apprehension. Perhaps your mind would be more at ease if you could look upon my brethren and I together, so that you can see how this 'power' would be split apart?"

"I don't think-" Ingward began, but whatever he'd intended to say next was lost in the great roar of breaking water.

From the black moat that swamped around the King's tower, they rose: ancient, massive, serpents, each just as large and hideous as Kaathe himself. Ingward stumbled back on the walkway and nearly lost his footing as the creatures came towering up to loom over him, burying him in their shadows. Their heads swayed near to the platform, clustering around Kaathe's own, and locking their green and red slitted eyes down upon Ingward to stare. Ingward swallowed and clutched his key tighter to his chest.

"So you see, Sealer," Kaathe went on. "I am not one. I am many. And my pets will not obey the whims of just one of us, but all of us."

Ingward's eyes flicked from serpent to serpent, sizing the monsters up before returning to Kaathe's own. "I don't understand. You have me outnumbered, outsized... if you desire my key so dearly, why not kill me and take it? Why burden me with taking part in this madness?"

"Because you are a man," one of the serpent's answered. "And a man must choose," another added.  
"It is your gift," yet another piped up.  
"And your power."

"We are servants."  
"But you are an arbiter."  
"And only one with freedom can truly make a decision."

"So, go, human."  
"Go and decide."  
"And return only when your choice has been made."

Ingward was so overwhelmed with the chorus of serpent's tongues hissing and whispering in his ears, he obeyed their final command almost immediately. He spun back on his heel and threw the old man's caution he'd traveled there with away in favor of a young man's desire to escape. His boots slapped against the wet stone underfoot as he hurried out of the depths of New Londo. Behind him, he could hear their soft, sweet, whispering going on and on, joining with the smattering of rain and thunder to coalesce into the perfectly definition of what Ingward must have imagined true madness sounded like. He did not look back.

-o-o-o-

The days following his meeting with Kaathe were restless and uncertain. Ingward returned to his vigilant post atop the ruins' main keep, and from its vantage point over the rest of New Londo, he could gaze not only over the destroyed city, but up towards the slopes and cliffs and castles that made up the rest of Lordran as well. He found his eyes returning their often while he sat, lost in his thoughts, and day after day came and went and that queer storm of purple and yellow moved nearer and nearer from the East; its rumblings growing loud enough to send ripples through the black waters of the ruins' lower levels. He thought of the men and women and children that still yet lived, despite the weather's unnatural turn that had befallen the lands, and he thought of how they were getting along in this new Lordran. He thought of days gone past and days not yet arrived. He thought of his brothers, of Yulva and the rest, and of what had become of them in the days since they'd fled and left him as the sole keeper of the seals... and of the key. He thought of the serpents and of the black army they'd requested of him. Mostly, though, he thought of the cycle, and with a bitter sense of irony, mused over how, in the end, it always came back around to that infernal cycle.

On the seventh day, he realized what must be done, and so - set about to do it.

The circle of serpents had not budged from the murky waters below the ruins, and when Ingward returned to them, they stood like leather pikes around the base of the King's tower watching him, as if in wait. It was Kaathe who spoke first, "Come to a decision, Sealer?"

"I'll open the second seal, Darkstalker," Ingward told him. "A wise decision."  
"Very wise."

"You serve the cycle as we do, now, Sealer."

"But I must know," Ingward went on. "...what will you set your creatures upon doing?"

A grin curled the corner's of Kaathe's wide, gaping, pit of a mouth. "Only what is required to ensure Lordran's safety. I will have them kill the firstborn, ensuring that Gwyn will not be replaced, and then we will set them out to find the rest of the humans and retrieve the Chosen."

"And what of those humans? Will they be permitted to keep their lives?"

"When the cycle spins back around? Certainly. All things will keep their lives in that sense. If you're asking if they will be spared this time around? ...no. They don't deserve it."

Ingward nodded. "Good," he said; it was the answer he'd been looking for. "My fellow kind have done everything they could do disrupt the order of things. They know nothing of loyalty or of servitude or of atonement for that matter. And they deserve their punishment. Come now, Darkstalker. Let us see what I can do about that pesky second seal."

Kaathe's grin widened. The serpent bowed its head reverently and slithered its way back beneath the ebony surface of the water. Its brethren followed shortly behind it, and Ingward was left alone. He pulled the key from within his robes, turned, and headed off to the lowest level of the ruins. The path there was a dark, narrow, clandestine, thing that twisted around towers and keeps and wound beneath rock tunnels carved into the earth that had been there since, perhaps, the beginning of all things. It emptied out to a cavern, where the waters spilled from above to pool at the cave's center in a swirl of darkness. Beyond, a waterfall blanketed an indentation in the rock wall, and the key Ingward held was the only thing in Lordran that would fit within.

Kaathe and his serpent brethren slithered up from shadowed nooks of water that lined the cave's perimeter to stand watch. Ingward bowed to the Darkstalker, squeezed the sealer's key between knuckles that had gone bone-white, and made his feet carry him into the room's central pool. Water seeped through the leathers of his boots and soaked his feet, but the Sealer did not care, did not hardly notice. His attention was held too raptly upon that queer indentation behind the veil of water, and before he'd even been aware he'd done so, he was standing before it with his arm stretched in front of him; the key dangling now between shaking fingers. He looked back to Kaathe.

"Choice is power," the serpent hissed. "The only true power," another spoke. "Wield it, Sealer."

"And right the wrongs of your kind."

"Serve the cycle beside us. Let is wash away the humans' sins."

"Let it atone."

"All men must pay for their sins, after all."

"All men must pay for their sins," Ingward agreed, reached forth, and plugged his key into the wall.

For a moment, nothing happened, and Ingward was left to drown in the silence of the serpents around him, his eyes narrowed in fearfully upon the key as the waterfall spilled over his hooded head. Then the rock faded, as if had only been an illusion all along, and a coldness so profound came sweeping upon him from within, his breath locked in his throat and he went as stiff as a board.

Ingward fell back to splash into the pool of water at his heels. His nose was filled with the thick, pungent, scent of the dead, and his eyelids had peeled back so wide, his face had began to hurt. The tunnel he'd unleashed twisted down into the depths of Lordran itself, and from within, he could see the outlines of dark shapes moving forth in a relentless march.

When the Darkwraiths finally emerged, Ingward was so frightened, he could only mouth soundless screams and clutch to his hammering heart as they came to look upon him. The knights who had, once, followed the four kings before the whole lot of them went to darkness, came filing out to swarm past Ingward, lying useless and terrified in the water. He could only catch glimpses of one of them before the sight grew too maddening to bear and he had to flick his eyes to another. Black armor and black swords sharpened to points at the tops. Masks-Or, perhaps, that is their face now, Ingward thought-that resembled a man's with the skin blown clean away to reveal the ugly structure of bone and sinew beneath. Gloved hands that were, at one moment, red and at the next, black. Ingward could not stand it anymore: he shut his eyes.

"Send them away, Kaathe! I can't bear to look at them any longer!" He shouted to be heard over the endless stream of footsteps marching out from Lordran's depths around him.

Kaathe did not respond, however, and after a moment, Ingward had to force his eyes back open, lest his own thoughts drive him even madder than the sight of the wraiths.

A Darkwraith was standing over him, staring down at him from eyes that, when peered into, revealed twin tunnels into the blackness that was a man's heart. Ingward screamed. The Darkwraith's head cocked on its side. It dropped its sword.

Ingward's head snapped to his right and spotted Kaathe hovering in the shadows, watching, grinning. Beside him, a new serpent had risen to watch the madness unfold as well. It was, Ingward saw with another strike of utter perplexity befalling him, Frampt. The two, who had always seemed opposed to one another did not look so opposed any longer. Frampt wore the same, satisfied, grin his brother did as the two watched Ingward from afar. The cycle, he realized. Of course they aren't opposed to one another. In the end, like all things, they serve the cycle.

Ingward eyes returned to the wraith above him and he screamed once more, but it did not last long.

The Darkwraith set its hand aglow with a pale, white, light and thrust it forth to Ingward's chest. He was lifted off the ground with the creature's inhuman strength, and dangled before it.

What have you done? Ingward thought as the wraith's glowing hand wrapped his throat and squeezed. The strangest sensation came over him, as if his very soul were being torn from his body, and a pain so severe it threatened to send him into unconsciousness gripped every last inch of his body, making it hard to breath, hard to see, hard to think. What have you done?

When the Darkwraith finished, Ingward was released; his long watch over the New Londo Ruins finally at its end.

His now-eyeless skull rolled back to float in the water, and as the man died racked in excruciating pain and suffocated in his own blindness, his parting thoughts were, Served the cycle. At least I've done that.

I hope.

Chapter 40

Izalith's great lakes of lava lie dormant and extinguished beneath the rocky fall of stone that was the once-fiery lands roof, and the only thing left in their place were massive sprawls of ice; blue and cold and endless. Where volcanic mounds once rose to spew Lordran's inner flame, jagged sheets of ice-caked rock had taken their place. Where fires once burned, smoke now swirled. Where demons once crawled, only frozen corpses now lay. Where Lordran's heart had once beat, only ruin now resided: still and quiet and dead.

Quelana stepped atop the frozen lake that looked over Izalith-a dry smoke sizzling where the soles of her bare feet met the ice-and stared forth into the barren lands she'd once called home. Near a cavernous indentation in the rock wall at the back of the ruins, a massive icicle cracked at its base and spilled down to the frozen lake below, colliding against the surface with a shatter that rumbled the entirety of Izalith itself. Cracks raced across the lake, and somewhere further along, Quelana could hear the icy waters beneath sloshing about, waiting, perhaps, for something to nourish their cold and insatiable hunger. Deeper within, some great beast moaned a sorrowful, pain-stricken, wail that was choked off almost immediately; its reverberation dancing queerly off the high walls of the ruins in spurts.

She walked forward and watched the ice splinter underfoot, as if her every step were killing it as it had killed Izalith. She pulled her robes tighter to her body as a wind swept from some unseen tunnel in the earth and sent her hair spiraling wildly out before her eyes. Quelana clawed it aside and tucked it beneath her hood, refusing to let it turn her back.

She was nearing the lake's center (with no true destination in mind) when the thump froze her feet to the ice they laid upon. Quelana narrowed her eyes to the nearest semiopaque patch that dotted the lake's surface and cocked her head as a figure began floating up from the darkness below to take form. As it neared, and she saw what horror was rising to meet her, Quelana's breath caught in her chest and she tried turning in retreat, but found she could no longer move. When she looked down, she found her feet had in fact been frozen in place; the lake itself reaching up to lock blue and white tendrils around her pale ankles.

Ice splintered, cracked, and broke, and Quelana could do nothing but stand and watch as the monster below rose up to stand before her. When it had, her fears were confirmed: it was her sister, Quelaan, The Fair Lady, risen from the black void beneath Izalith to come for Quelana.

Her sister was tall, naked, save for a thin sheet of blue ice wrapped around her chest and legs, and was weeping beneath a fall of frail, silvery, hair that lay around her face in unkempt tangles. Beneath, Quelana could see rheumy eyes, emerald green like her own, peering out at her: a gleam of mad interest swirling within. Her sister moved her arm aside, and

when she did, Quelana saw she carried the severed head of the Knight of Thorns with her. The man was watching Quelana as well, a twisted smile curled up his plump and bloodied lips.

Quelana made to command her flames between Quelaan and herself to protect her, but when she did, her arm would not move. She looked to see it too had frozen solid; the ice below slowly creeping its way up her body to seal her in its cold embrace forever.

The Fair Lady took a timid step forward and Kirk's head began laughing an insane, delighted, laugh. 'Snuff the flame', it sang. 'Snuff the flame, snuff the flame, snuff the flame.'

Further behind The Fair Lady, more cracks formed on the lake's surface, and Quelana watched in horror as the rest of her sisters came crawling out to join the first; pale hands deformed into claws ripping up through the ice and pulling the monster's below up to the surface. Each of their eyes were held hungrily on Quelana's own as they approached; formless, hideous, creatures that had once been beautiful before the chaos had taken them all. All but her. Quelana made to scream, but the ice had worked its way up around her lips, sealing them shut and entering into her throat to freeze her insides as well.

"Come for you soul, witch," Kirk's head barked between fits of laughter. "Told you she'd have it, didn't I?"

Quelaan's sickly-blue lips lifted into what might have been a smile beneath her tangle of silver hair. She raised her free hand forward to close the gap between Quelana and herself, and her fingers were not made of flesh, but of pure ice. Behind her, the rest of the Daughters of Chaos were joined in, closing tightly around Quelana's helplessly frozen body.

Quelana whimpered into the ice that had tunneled between her lips, down her throat, and into her belly to extinguish her inner flame. Her eyes flicked from one sister to the next as they neared and neared, hands outstretched to grasp her, to take her, to pull her down into the lake of cold that awaited and seal her away forever as punishment for her abandonment.

And Kirk's head laughed and laughed and laughed.

-o-o-o-

She woke in the darkness of the little room Andre had assigned her, gasping for breath, and when her hand moved to her throat, for one mad moment, she thought it felt like ice. Quelana commanded a flame to the tip of her finger, and when the light bathed the room in its glow, she calmed herself. She quelled the fire, clambered up out of the mound of blankets she'd made her bedding, and pushed open the thin piece of

wood they'd nailed up that was serving as the room's 'door'.

In the hall outside, the upper level of the church was, for the most part, quiet. A man and woman were having a cordial exchange down near the fall of steps that wound towards the main chapel, and a group of children were squealing with excited delight as they played hide-and-seek at the other end. Quelana watched them a moment, letting their youthful innocence drive that last cobwebs of the nightmare that still clung to her mind away. One of the littler boys noticed her, and when his big brown eyes fell upon her, they widened and his breath caught. Quelana smiled, raised a hand between them, and made her flames dance across the tips of her fingers back and forth. The boy's expression of fear was replaced with one of awe, and when Quelana extinguished the light, he laughed, bowed his head appreciatively, and ran off to join his friends.

"My lady," a voice came from the shadows beside her door.

Quelana spun towards the sound, half-expecting a monster made of ice awaiting her, but only the pyromancer, Laurentius, emerged. She breathed relief.

Laurentius took her hand in his own and kissed at it. "I'm sorry to have frightened you, my lady. I only kept myself hidden so that I may keep watch over you as your rested."

Quelana was quick to snatch her hand back. Since they'd arrived at the church ten days earlier, the pyro had been clinging to her every step, never straying far from her. It was... a bit disconcerting, in truth. "Well, thank you for that, I suppose, Laurentius, but I'm not entirely sure what you're keeping watch over me for..."

"So that no harm should befall you, of course, my lady."

"Are you expecting harm to come looking for me?"

Soft laughter rumbled from beneath his brown hood. "Of course not, Quelana. But if it should, I shall be there to stave it off. For you... my lady."

He made to take her hand again, but Quelana turned her shoulder so that his arm only grazed against her own. "You have my thanks, Laurentius," she said curtly, and began heading off down the hall.

He was quick to fall in beside her. "Solaire and his group haven't yet returned," Lauretnius explained, slipping his arm beneath her own to walk alongside her. Quelana sighed, but did not move to escape him. "There are those who begin to worry downstairs. It's been three days now. I, of course, carry no such concerns. The Knight of Sunlight is brave and true, and the men he travels with are no cowards either."

"On that we agree," she said as they rounded the curve at the end of the hall and passed beneath the arched stone that led to the next hall.

"Though one must wonder, admittedly, what Solaire and Tarkus and the rest have been doing out there," said Laurentius. "To scout the city of Anor Londo would not have taken more than a day. If they were taken unawares by some rogue squad of hollows, as many below have began to claim, Solaire surely would have had the wits about him to send a man in retreat to carry the news to us."

"Solaire knows what he's doing," Quelana said. "If he felt it was important to scout further into the city, or perhaps even somewhere else... I trust his instincts."

"As do I, my lady. As do I. It's just... well, there is a pressure stirring amongst those left here. People are growing uneasy without the knight and Tarkus' presence. It will be good for them to see you. You are one of the few remaining strong enough to defend them." The pyromancer's look darkened beneath his hood as they began the descent of the church's stairs. "Young Benjamin certainly hasn't been doing anything to help their unease. Him and his little gang... they walk around here like they own the place. Andre doesn't care for it, and neither do I. Abby... well, you know what she's been up to. And Lautrec-"

"I assure you I know what he's been up to as well," Quelana interrupted. There are few these days who don't, she thought.

"Yes," the pyromancer said with a grimace. "If you ask me, it is quite the cowardly thing to do, especially of a knight. Turn into a drunk when the women and children around you need your skills most." He shook his head. "Craven. You know, my lady, I would never-"

"I don't wish to discuss the knight of Carim anymore," she said amicably enough, and her request was enough to make Laurentius hold his tongue as they finished their journey to the chapel.

The church's main hall was filled with the sound of chatter and the banging and slamming of the carpentry taking place just outside the stained glass windows that poured colorful light down upon the pews and tables that littered its center. Quelana leaned out to peer around a pillar and saw a large group huddled together near the church's entrance in the next room, swarming around Rickert as he stood upon a raised bit of stone, gesturing with his arms and relaying a story, a sly grin upon his face as he did so. He, apparently, had said something rather funny, as a roar of laughter rumbled from the group and the young man pantomimed himself getting punched in the stomach.

The freckled woman who had been quick to befriend Quelana, Sieglinde, came shoving through the crowd with a cluster of wooden planks, wrapped together with a leather band, slung atop her broad shoulders. Rickert muttered something to the crowd after she'd passed and they laughed again. Sieglinde ignored it, flashing a toothy smile Quelana's way as she passed to head outside.

A shout from the chapel's direction caught Quelana's attention. She walked out of the pillar's shadow, Laurentius quick to hurry beside her, and looked to the church's head. Beneath the crumbled statue there, Ben and Rhea were standing across one another, their eyes locked fiercely upon each other's, as Andre stirred a boiling pot in his little makeshift kitchen behind them. Behind Ben, his usual gang were leaned up against the wall around him. Patches was chewing on a toothpick, casting a bored, disinterested, look upon the priestess whom Ben was arguing with. Pharis-or at least, that is what she claimed her name was-was beside him, and Quelana had seen the woman looking upon Ben with more and more interest in her pale blue eyes as the days drew on in the chapel, and then was no different. She smiled as Ben's voice rose, almost as if she were proud of his anger.

Perhaps more disturbing than anything was the sorcerer, Griggs, whom Quelana had sworn she'd seen dead in Logan's dungeon, but who had risen to flee the fallen castle and join them. He had fallen in with Ben as well, never straying far from the boy, that queer, disconcerting, smile never straying far from the man's face. He was huddled up in their group in a fall of violet robes, swaying his hips as he watched the argument unfold before him.

"He's a child!" Rhea snapped, the priestess' comely face taking on a foreign expression of anger.

"All the more reason to teach him a lesson," Ben said calmly, sticking a finger in the woman's face.

He's grown, Quelana thought, looking Benjamin over. He was tall, at least a whole head over Rhea, and the beard she'd see sprawling across his cheeks and chin had filled in, making him less and less like the boy Lautrec and herself had gone to retrieve from the Asylum so long ago, and more like a man whom she did not know.

"Teach him a lesson!?" Rhea asked, her brow lifting incredulously. "You have the audacity to call what you want to do a lesson?"

"My father did the same to me," Ben said. "And I learned from it. As he will."

"You're not touching that child!" Rhea demanded. "You aren't in charge here."  
"And neither are you!"

Quelana climbed the short stack of stairs to the chapel area, but it was not Ben or Rhea who spotted her-their attention was still held too fiercely on one another's-it was Patches. He rolled his eyes upon glimpsing her approach and pushed off the wall to step between her and Ben with his hand raised. "Stay out of this, witch. This is a human issue."

Rhea turned and Quelana saw the relief wash across her pretty face immediately. "Lady Quelana, thank Father Eternal."

Ben's dark eyes flicked to her as well and narrowed, but he voiced no protest.

"What's going on here?" She asked, coming as near as she could before Patches' hand moved to halt her.

"I said it's none of your concern, witch," Patches growled.

Laurentius held a gloved hand to Patches' face and extended a finger. "You watch your tongue, Hyena. You speak to the Mother of Pyromancy. She could melt your bald head right off your shoulders in a second should she choose to."

Patches laughed. "Perhaps so. A shame that would rather upset my friends behind me. I wonder... how many arrows you think you could put in the witch's chest before she hits the ground, Pharis?"

The red-headed woman lowered her hand to her hip so that her fingers could dance along the quiver of arrows there. "Plenty," she answered with a grin.

"Enough!" Andre roared, turning from his pot of stew to fix each of them with a frown in turn. "If yer all going to go bloody kill yerselves, go do it outside! I'm cooking the meal that's going to feed yer damned bellies here!"

Rhea shouldered past Patches to take Quelana's hand in her own. "Lady Quelana," she began, "one of the children, Thomas his name is, made a mistake. Ben wants to burn the boy for it!"

"Oh quit the dramatics, woman," Patches said. "He doesn't want to burn the kid, he wants to put a little mark his hand."

"Mark?" Quelana questioned. "What did this Thomas child do?"

"Little bastard burned up the wood!" Pharis piped up.

"By accident!" Rhea insisted. "He was playing outside with some of the other children. There was a bundle of wood they were using as a little play-fort or something, and Thomas dropped it too near to a fire and forgot about it. That's all!"

"He ruined it," Ben said.

"Aye," Patches agreed. "And good men, myself among them, have risked our lives heading into that damned Darkroot Garden to retrieve that bloody wood. We need it for fires, for cooking, for shelter. And the boy ruined it. Now he needs punishment."

"If Solaire was here, you wouldn't be so openly callous!" Rhea snapped.

"If the Knight of Sunlight were here, I'd be even more so," Patches defended. "He'd understand. A crime needs punishment. That's how you keep things in order."

"And what has been your punishment for your crime against Lautrec in the Burg?" Quelana asked, fixing the Hyena with a shrewd look. "Perhaps we should 'mark' you as well?"

Patches' expression darkened only briefly before his grin rose. "Perhaps we should. Go get the drunk and drag him in here to mark me. Hee-hee. Let's see if he can hold the iron steady enough."

"Bring me the child," Ben said. "I will heat my dagger over a flame and lay it, briefly, upon his hand. It will hurt, sure. It will leave a mark, definitely. But he will learn, and the next time he is at 'play' he will be more cautious."

"I will not stand by and watch an innocent child harmed," Rhea told him.

"And she doesn't stand alone," Quelana added, falling in line beside the priestess.

Ben's eyes flicked between the two of them. He shook his head, raised his arm before him, and pulled the leather glove adorned upon it free. Beneath, the flesh atop his hand was marked with white scar lines. "There's my mistake. I was racing my friends on horseback through the woods near our home and I foolishly led my steed right into a crick and broke its legs. We lost a good horse that day, and my father gave me this mark. It hurt and, at the time, I hated him for it. But I learned. And I never made that mistake again." He narrowed his look on Quelana. "If that child makes another mistake, the responsibility will lie solely with you, Quelana. Are you prepared for that kind of responsibility?"

Who is this man? Quelana thought, holding Ben's dark eyes. Whatever had happened to him between leaving him with Domhnall in the Burg and now had filled him with some self-righteous confidence. She could see his little gang behind him beaming with pride as they looked upon her, nodding. "I'll bear the responsibility," she told Ben. "You just don't go and make anymore decisions like that without consulting with Solaire or myself first. Understood?"

"The two of you aren't in charge," he said. "Don't forget that." And with those words, he turned and sauntered off; his group quick to fall in line behind him.

When they'd gone, Rhea turned an appreciative smile on Quelana and gripped her arm. "Thank you, Lady Quelana. If you weren't here, well, I'm not sure what might've happened. I think, well, perhaps that Benjamin is... well, a rather mean-spirited young man."

"Him, or perhaps the company he keeps," Quelana agreed, turning to watch them disappear around the the church's side entrance. "I'd stay clear of them if possible, Rhea."

"Yes... on that we agree," the priestess said, bowed, and headed off.

"Blood squabbles in my kitchen..." Andre muttered, returning to his stew and testing it with a wooden ladle.

"Perhaps we can go for a walk, my lady," Laurentius suggested. She'd nearly forgotten he was beside her, and so his words startled her a bit. He laughed and reached for her hand. "No need to be frightened, Quelana. I won't bite. You have my word on that."

She slipped her hand away from his. "Laurentius, please. Could I, perhaps, just be alone a moment?"

The pyromancer's smile wavered beneath his hood. He swallowed, seeming to have to fight to keep it in place as he looked upon her. "...yes. Of course, my lady. Should you need me, a simple call of my name and I will be at your side to serve you hand and foot."

"I won't need you," she said, trying not to sound rude, but knowing she'd failed.

He lost the fight with his waning smile. "I see. Well... perhaps tomorrow you will feel differently."

"Perhaps," she said.

Laurentius lifted her hand, kissed at it, and left her to join Rickert's howling group of men beyond the rows of church pews. Quelana watched him go, wondering if his affection for her would cause her any problems in the future. When the answer did not come clearly, she set the thought aside and headed off towards the church's side entrance.

Outside, the rain-which had ceased to stop falling since the day it had started-was trickling gently along the wooden planks the men and women had set up to act as a sort of awning against the storm. Quelana looked above them, towards the setting sun in the West, and then to the purple swell of clouds that crawled nearer and nearer from the East. A soft rumbling of thunder growled through the air, carrying with it the fresh scent of rain and a chilly breeze that reminded Quelana of her nightmare, and of that mad vision of an icy Izalith she'd glimpsed within.

She pried her eyes from the coming storm and walked beneath the wooden awning. Within, men and women were grouped in lined rows separated by more wood, each working diligently within their own little nook on various tasks. Women near the head of the path were busy sewing blankets from scraps of cloth and tattered drapes and sheets. Further on, animal carcasses were being skinned; though most were the

deformed dogs from the burg, and their skin was thin and frail and did not carry much use. At the end of the awning's shelter, men were gathered about, sawing apart trees and chopping up wood. Amongst them, a single young woman was on her knees, working, perhaps, harder than any of them on slimming down a hunk of wood to planks.

"Abby," Quelana called.

Abby lifted her head, swiping sweat from her dirty brow with the back of her sleeve. When her eyes fell upon Quelana, a smile rose up her face and she laughed. Quelana moved forward just as Abby was climbing to her feet, and the two embraced one another. "Quelana," Abby greeted, squeezing her. "I missed you. Are you okay?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry my absence troubled you," Quelana told her as they parted each other's arms. "I needed the last few days alone to... think about some things." She looked Abby over. If there was one thing in Lordran she could feel good about, it was the girl. Abby's complexion had returned to her, her hair growing back out to fall around her face in falls of chestnut-brown waves, and when she smiled, it seemed to brighten Lordran itself. "Still keeping busy?" Quelana asked.

Abby nodded. "Domhnall is a good teacher. I know how to sew now and how to chop wood and how to skin an animal. He's teaching me how to cook, too."

"Aye siwmae," Domhnall's amicable voice greeted from a bit further down the line. The merchant's horned helm was beside him as he separated a pile of logs, and he was smiling beneath his mop of auburn hair. "She's got a bit to go on the cooking, though, Lady Quelana. I was the unfortunate one to test her last meal."

Abby's face reddened. "I didn't mean to make you sick..."

Domhnall laughed. "Oh, I didn't mind, Abby. I knew every ache of my belly was in servitude of turning you into a fine cook. ...someday," he added with a wink.

"And you're still reading?" Quelana asked. The second day they'd spent at the church, Solaire had led a small team back to the Archives to retrieve what supplies they could make use of. Everyone had put in their separate requests of the knight and his men, and Abby's had simply been to bring back one sack of books from the library. Solaire had brought back three.

"Oh yes," Abby said, her smile widening. "Every night. I'm learning a lot, Quelana. I... I just have a feeling there's something we don't understand yet. In Vinheim, our teachers told us books were the keepers of all the world's knowledge. If there's something to be learned that could aid us, I promise to learn it. They help me sleep, too. I never thought I'd appreciate sleep so much, but after what happened at the Archives..."

Abby's smile faded.

Quelana squeezed her arm. "That is over now, Abby. Don't dwell on it. You've done a wonderful job recovering, and if there is something to be found in those books, I couldn't think of a better mind set to find it."

"You're so kind to me..." Abby said, lowering her gaze. "You don't know how much it means to me after the things I did and said at the Archives to treat me like this."

Quelana grazed Abby's cheek with the back of her hand. "It's alright, Abby. Why don't you come inside? It looks like Andre's almost ready to serve dinner."

"Oh, no," Abby said, shaking her head. Her eyes moved behind Quelana's shoulders and narrowed, as if looking for something. "I don't want to cause any trouble."

"Trouble?"

She sighed. "Ben... I don't think he likes me very much."

Ben, Quelana thought bitterly. The young man's name was seemingly associated with everyone's troubles these days. "Don't let him bully you, Abby."

Abby shrugged. "It's fine. I just stay out of his way. I like it out here anyway." She took a deep breath, tugging at the corner of her leather jerkin. "Have you... talked to Lautrec at all?"

"No," Quelana admitted. "I don't think anyone has. He doesn't seem very interested in talking these days."

"It's my fault, you know," Abby said. "Whatever he's suffering through that's made him turn to the wineskin every night... it's my fault."

"Suffering doesn't last forever," Quelana told her. "When it ends, he will thank you for saving his sister's life."

"I... hope you're right." Abby sighed and glanced down at her woodwork. "I should get busy if I want to get a hour or two of reading in tonight. Thank you for coming to see me, Quelana, and... if it's possible... would you check in on him? I know no one else has the courage or concern to."

"Lautrec?"

Abby nodded. "If there's one person here who he might talk to... I think it would be you."

"Why me?"  
Abby smiled wistfully. "Since we all came together, I've seen a look in his

eye when he gazed upon you from time to time that I didn't understand until I believe the same look came to my eye for him. Somewhere in there, he has affection for you, Quelana. I think, perhaps, my bitterness towards you when I couldn't sleep at the Archives may have stemmed from that very notion. But that was a girl's love, and the girl I was is gone. The woman in me understands the heart wants what it wants and it will never be steered by anything but its own desires."

"Wise words, Abby. Wise words," Domhnall piped up from behind them.

"I'll... try," Quelana said. "I can't promise I'll get anything out of him. From what I hear, no one has."

Abby nodded, squeezing Quelana's hand. "Thank you, Quelana. I'm so happy you're here with us. I... I don't feel afraid knowing you are my ally."

And I hope that feeling won't fade when I leave you, my sweet child, Quelana thought. She mulled over telling Abby the decision she'd arrived upon in her days holed up in the church's upper level, but when she looked upon the girl's smile, she couldn't bear to be the one to erase it with the news. Instead, she returned the gesture and nodded before leaving Abby and Dom to head back inside.

As night fell upon the Parish, the ensconced torches were lit, the church hall was filled, the tables brought together, and the smell of Andre's stew seemed to put a quiet eagerness in every man and woman that gathered along the benches that lined either side of the long table. Spare chairs were shuffled forth, their feet screeching along the stone-slabbed floor, and every last inch of the dinner table was filled. Ben and his group were clustered around the end of the table, listening and laughing as Patches told a story. When Abby and Domhnall came in, Quelana saw the girl's eyes move warily to Benjamin, and she was quick to seat herself as far away as possible. Quelana would have sat with her, but there was no room, so she seated herself down between Anastacia and the heavy-set man, Vince; the former flashing a wan smile her way, the latter licking at his plump lips and staring towards the chapel, where Andre and Sieglinde were carefully guiding out the massive black pot of steaming stew.

"If you spill that on the floor, Andre," Rickert began (he and Rhea has seated themselves across the table from Quelana), "I'm so damned hungry I'd likely slurp it up anyway."

"Please don't spill it on the floor then," Rhea added. "I'd rather not see Rickert eat, well, floor-soup."

The young man beside the priestess laughed and laid his hand atop hers. Rhea did not remove it, and Quelana found herself pleased that the two had, seemingly, finally stopped dancing around the fact they cared for one another.

"No one's spillin' the damned soup," Andre growled, his large muscle tense beneath his mane of grey hair as he hauled the pot to the front of the table with Sieglinde. When the massive thing was slammed atop the wood, he began fishing out bowls from a container at his feet, filling them, and giving the order to pass them down the line. Quelana found herself counting the mouths he'd need to feed and realized, despite the enormity of the pot, it would be impossible to feed them all. She opted not to eat, so that someone else might. Anastacia did the same beside her, but Quelana thought it was, perhaps, for another reason. The firekeeper had looked absolutely terrified almost every moment of the waking day since they'd arrived at the church. Can you blame her? Quelana thought, watching as Anastacia's eyes flicked warily around the room. She knows he still wants to kill her. And he's out there.

Since she was not eating, Quelana excused herself from table, though the chatter had grown loud since the soup was served, and her voice was practically lost within it. As she passed the longtable, she heard someone asking about when they were going to come up with a plan, and another answering they were waiting for Solaire and his men to return. Another mocked the 'Chosen' for not having any answers, but a sharp retort from Patches silenced the mockery as quickly as it had come about. One group was engaged in discussing the fact that Solaire might just be dead, and why he hadn't returned to them yet. Another claimed they saw the crossbreed (who had fled to the skies the day the rest of them set out for the Parish) circling over the church, waiting to snatch up the children. Quelana did not believe that foolish bit of gossip for one second. Another woman was going on with some tale of screams coming up from the ruins of New Londo in the middle of the night. And yet another was insisting that Quelana herself should be outcast so that the Gods did not think they were aligned with the demons of Izalith. When Quelana passed the woman, her friends tugged at her skirt, and when she spun around and glimpsed the 'witch of Izalith' before her, all the color ran from her cheeks until they were as pale as Quelana's own. Quelana ignored her.

Beneath the arched doorway of the church's entrance, the rain had began falling heavier as the darkness of night settled in. Quelana pulled her robes tighter to her body as she stepped into the storm, her bare feet splashing in the puddles that had formed in the uneven falls of land. She crossed through the church's courtyard, taking glimpses of the shelters that had been built on either side of wooden planks and metal support bars. A long fall of stairs, slick with rain, carried her beneath a massive portcullis and out to the Parish streets.

Overhead, on a thin bridge of stone that crossed right over the middle of the street, the knight of Carim was swaying back on his heels, taking aim with a bow. Quelana halted, watching as he loosed a shaft to go sailing through the streets and burst apart against the wall at the far end. He had, apparently, been aiming for a stacked pot. If so, he had aimed poor.

"Do we have arrows to waste on such a game?" Quelana asked, raising her voice to be heard from below him.

Lautrec turned to face her and nearly lost his footing. The rain had soaked his hair, sticking it to his face in wet clumps, and he had to claw it away and squint to make her out. When he had, he scoffed and nocked another arrow. Quelana's eyes found two wineskins at his feet: the first, empty; the second, half-empty. She sighed and headed down the road to take the twist of stairs up so she was on his level.

When she came upon him again, the bow in his hand had been replaced by the wineskin. He took a long pull off it, a dark spill of red coming away when he dropped it from his mouth. He swiped the wine clean, reached for a torch near his feet, and tossed it to her. "Here, witch. Make yourself useful."

Quelana caught it, barely, and hesitated only briefly before realizing he wanted her to light it. She did, sticking it in a sconce near the parapets at her side, and casting its light to flicker upon Lautrec, his wineskins, and the bridge he teetered dangerously upon. He stared at her only long enough, apparently, to remember he wanted another drink. He took it.

"You know they are going to run out of wine sooner or later," Quelana told him. "What will you use to kill yourself then?"

Lautrec shrugged. "Heard the sharp side of a dagger works pretty well."

"If you're going to throw your life away like this, why don't you throw it away helping the people who can still find use for you?" Quelana snapped. "Are you still such a fool after everything you've been through?"

"Fool..." He muttered, shaking his head so that his rain-soaked hair slapped against his cheeks. "The biggest one in Lordran." He swigged at the wineskin.

Quelana watched him drink, the rain quietly smattering the stone beneath them, playing the storm's soft, haunting, song. When he finished he tossed the empty thing to the streets below and hoisted the bow back to his shoulder. He nocked, aimed, loosed, and missed again. He muttered a curse, his eyes floating lazily to Quelana. "What do you want?"

"What do I want?"

"Ah, so you can hear beneath that heavy hood you always wear," he said with a bark of mirthless laughter. His eyes narrowed upon her. "Take it off, witch. It reminds me of death."

"Isn't that what you crave?"

"Maybe it is..." He admitted. "...but I don't want to be reminded of that fact. Remove it."

Quelana sighed. A sad day when your at the whim of a drunk man's ramblings, she thought, pulling the hood from her head. She winced as the rain fell upon her exposed brow.

Lautrec stared across the gap between them, swaying ever-so-slightly in his drunkenness. He sniffed, swiped rain from his face, and crossed the bridge. Quelana's posture stiffened when he rounded the bend of the parapets and reached for her arm. "What are you doing? I-" He pulled her to him and kissed at her lips. Quelana got her hands up between them and shoved him back. "What's the matter with you, you drunken fool!?"

Lautrec nearly fell from her push. His arms pinwheeled to catch his balance, and when it was caught he frowned at her. "What are you doing out here if not coming to finally put this matter between us to rest."

"This matter!?" She echoed incredulously. "Are you mad?"

Lautrec shook hair from his face. "I desire you, witch. You've saved my life more than once now, and I'm but a man. Flesh and blood. If you're not aware of that fact yet... you're by far the bigger fool than I."

"You're drunk," she hissed.

"And what are you?" Lautrec asked, leaning upon the parapet to steady his sway. "Do you desire men as men, certainly, desire after you? You aren't human, but... surely, you know what you look like. The Gods, or... whatever created us, created you quite well. It would be an almost comical twist of cruel irony if you did not desire us in return."

Despite her anger with the knight, her thoughts managed to turn to Salaman. He had been her student once, in, perhaps, another life. He was a kind man with a comely face and he had been the first human she'd ever looked upon as something... more than a student. Then the flames had consumed it, turned him against her, and driven him all but mad. It was the last time she'd ever thought about a human in that way... lest she be driven just as mad.

"I know that look," Lautrec said, pointing across the gap between them. "You were in love. Was it with a man? Or was it with the flames?"

"I'm not going to discuss this with you," Quelana told him.

"No? Then why, witch, did you bother coming out here in the first place? You didn't come because of what could be between us?"

"I came for Abby's sake!" Quelana snapped. "You have the girl stricken with guilt because of this... drunken isolation you've delved into! It's not fair to Abby to-"

"Fair!?" Lautrec shouted so loudly, Quelana found herself recoiling from him. "Don't you dare talk about what's 'fair' to me. That girl has destroyed

me, witch. She claimed she was 'freeing' me? All she did was trap me in this living hell my life has become. My anger hasn't left. If anything, its grown greater within me. But now... now when I look upon Ana's face I can see the girl I used to call my sister. Now... now I'm damned if I kill her... and damned if I don't..."

"You can make things right," Quelana said. "Go to you sister. Talk to her. You-"

"No," Lautrec answered. "You don't understand, witch. No one can. Imagine you had a purpose, so clear, so defined, that it drove your every action. Now imagine that purpose was driving you for years-decades!-and it was suddenly pulled from beneath your feet... No. I'm not going to Anastacia. Either I'll die with a wineskin in my hand, or a blade across my throat. And then... then maybe I will be at peace. Maybe I'll be 'free'."

Quelana shook her head. "You're throwing your life away when there are men and women and children who could use it!"

"Aaaah," Lautrec growled, grinning. "Everyone wants something... always has been true... always will be..." He, apparently, had decided he was losing the fight with his legs, and leaned into the parapets to drop to his ass. He swiped rain from his face and let his head rest back against the stone, watching as more fell upon him. "Everyone wants something..." he repeated.

Quelana watched as the man closed his eyes and only the smattering of rain remained to fill the silence. She wasn't entirely sure why, but she felt the sudden urge to tell him of the decision she'd came upon the previous day. After wrestling with the idea for a moment, she said, "When Solaire and his men return, and I'm sure Abby and the rest no longer need me, I'm leaving. I'm... returning to Izalith... to settle things with my sisters before... well, before the end."

Lautrec swallowed, though whether he was awake to hear her confession or not, she could not tell. She found herself watching the rain as it raced across his brow and chin, and thought he did not look so dissimilar from Salaman, in truth. She sighed, moved before him, and knelt to tug his cloak up over his brow so he didn't wind up drowning in the rain instead of the wine. "I can't care about you," she told him. "Because you only care about yourself."

Lautrec's response was his head drooping to his chest; the knight was fast asleep.

For, perhaps, no other reason than she had no where else to go, Quelana sat beside him, staring out over the parapets that loomed over the forest, and watching as the moon rose in the night sky, thinking on how it looked like a giant slab of ice... like Izalith had become.

Sometime later, she fell asleep herself; the soft sounds of the rain guiding her into a dream about a fair lady, rising from a lake of ice, watching... and waiting.

Chapter 41

Solaire pressed flat to the building and looked across the rain-slicked cobblestones that comprised the streets of Anor Londo to a shadowed alleyway twisting into the belly of two opposed towers. There, he could see a patch of falling raindrops, like a sheet of clawed glass suspended in mid-air, caught in the glow of Tarkus' torch. The big man was adorned in his black plate mail, and the torch was casting a glowing red orb upon his chest that did not look entirely unlike a man's heart. Tarkus nodded, held up his hand to flash two gauntlet-encased fingers, and movement stirred behind him: the half-dozen soldiers Solaire had sent him with. Solaire returned the gesture, gripped tighter at the hilt of his sunlight straight sword, and slipped around the buildings cover.

Lordran was dark at night, particularly so since the unusual weather had befallen it, but down amidst the streets and houses and alleys that made up the city's lower level, it was all but pitch black. The group of hollows they were targeting stood clustered around a fallen wagon-the warped and wooden thing long-since gone to decadence-and never saw Solaire coming until his sword was upon them. They fell in the night with a flurry of jabs and cuts, as easily and silently as the raindrops, and Tarkus joined in beside him to hack down the remaining creatures before they could voice protest.

When the work was done, only a pile of bodies remained gathered in a circle around the decaying wagon; the red glow of the fallen hollow's eyes dimming to black as their final, necrotic, breaths gasped at the air. Tarkus pulled his helm free and shook out a shaggy fall of hair that had already began to dampen beneath the relentless rains coming down around them. He grinned and swept his arm across their defeated foes. "Nothing like a good, quick, victory to stir the blood, aye boys?"

The men at their rear, Solaire's squire Henrik among them (his shoulder in a sling, but his good arm still able to wield a sword as fine as any of the rest), muttered their agreement, but did not seem to house the same lust for combat as Tarkus. He rumbled laughter that coalesced with the thunder overhead so that for one, ephemeral, moment - man and storm spoke as one. "If nothing, hollows are good for a bit of practice. Kruger, you've got the next kill," he told one of the men before pointing the tip of his greatsword at another. "Then you, Henrik. The lot of you need some kills before I gobble them all up, afterall. Har!"

"Careful, my friend," Solaire warned, casting a wary eye further down the dark street. "If there are more nearby, best not to alert them to our presence. Taking them unaware as we've been has worked well for us so far. I'd rather not test our luck."

"Aye. You've got command, Solaire. It is as you say."

"We'll clear down to that alleyway near the bridge," Solaire said, sweeping his sword's tip from their feet to the mark he intended them to reach. "Stay split up as we've been moving, and watch the flanks and the rearguard. We haven't seen nearly enough hollows, and they have to be out there somewhere. Praise the Sun and let us hope it rises upon the city sooner rather than later to expose their hiding spots. Come."

The streets came alive with the sound of iron boots clicking and clacking as they hurried down the road's opposing flanks, their torches clawing orbs of light further and further ahead of them as they moved. Movement caught in Solaire's periphery, and he hoisted a fist to halt their progress. With only the smattering of rain to fill the quiet, he narrowed his eyes upon a nearby alley and watched as a dark figure emerged.

It was a dog, limping along as listlessly as a summer breeze, its head lowered timidly to the cobblestone, its tail tucked up between its legs. It was a far cry from the deformed beasts that stalked the Burg and had given Solaire and his company so much trouble in previous endeavors, and so the knight only watched as the rain-soaked thing passed, gave it a moment to get away, and opened his fist, signaling for advancement.

They reached the alley beside the bridge, and Solaire leaned out to peer over the stone railing. Below, a narrow canal twisted through Anor Londo and may have once been used to carry supplies quickly and safely throughout the city-Before the ruin took it, Solaire thought-but now, the only thing caught in the water's path were bits of mud and debris. The canal was unusually high, but that was no surprise. Since the rain had started falling days earlier, it had refused to stop. Soon enough, all of Lordran might be underwater. And may the Sun truly watch over us then, Solaire thought.

A bolt of lightning raced down the black canvas of sky overhead, casting a muted yellow light quickly over the streets ahead, behind, and on either side of the crossway. They shared a common feature: absolute emptiness.

Tarkus stepped beside Solaire shaking his head. "It just doesn't make any sense. Where in Izalith did all those bastard hollows run off to? The blacksmith and his crew swore they saw them retreat to the city. Well either they've gone and pulled a miracle, or we've been had, Solaire. There's nothing here except a few stray packs of stragglers."

"There must be something we've overlooked," Solaire said, sweeping his eyes across the shadowed nooks of the city around them, but finding only darkness and rain; always rain.

"To Izalith with this, Knight Solaire!" A younger man, Walder his name was, piped up from the rear of the squad. "If there ain't no fight, there ain't no fight. Let's go back! Everyone else gets to eat the blacksmith's cooking every night in the warmth of the Parish church, while we're out here trudging around in the rain for a few dozen disorganized hollows! It

ain't fair!"

"Watch your tone, boy, Solaire is your commander here," Tarkus said.

"What we do is in service of those men and women and children who remain in the Parish," Solaire explained. "We are here so that the innocent may have peace of mind and the promise of safety. That is the life of a knight."

"We ain't no knights!" Walder protested.

"I said watch your tone!" Tarkus growled.

"If you are with me here now, you are a knight. I have the authority to make it so," Solaire explained. "If you like, I'll lay my sword upon your shoulder so that you can take a vow."

"I'd sooner take a roof over my head than a knighthood!"

"Alright. That's it. You've gone and pissed me of now, boy," Tarkus said, stepping forward to grab at the young man's arm.

"Solaire!" Henrik shouted in the hushed tone of one who required both urgency as well as stealth.

The tone alone was enough to raise Solaire's hand in a fist to silence the bickering, and when he looked to Henrik, he saw the boy's eyes were locked down the road leading West. Solaire followed his gaze and spotted a swarm of red eyes coming forth in the storm's rainy wall.

"Cover at the flanks! Go!" Solaire commanded, matching his squire's hushed tone.

Despite the subversive discussion they'd been having, when the command was in, they all followed it with military precision. Tarkus led half the squad to the far side of the street and disappeared beneath the awning of a crumbling building that may have once been a market place. Solaire moved with the rest to the near side, pressing against a waist-high barrier of stone and crouching to disappear beneath it. He leaned his head out at once to survey the oncoming hollows.

It was the largest group they'd seen marching forth in the middle of the road, but far from unmanageable. Solaire counted, perhaps, ten, and when he looked to Tarkus across the road, the man's meaty fingers flashed 'five' twice, confirming it. Solaire nodded, signaled for the men at his rear to ready themselves, and steadied his breathing to wait for the squads approach.

When the hollows were just about caught between Tarkus and his own position, Solaire released a closed fist, and the two teams fell upon the hollows as one, clashing in around them like a hammer closing over an

anvil. The creatures, like the ones before them and the dog they'd spotted not moments earlier, moved in a listless, sluggish, manner to defend themselves, and soon enough every one of the ten were hissing their last breath as they clogged up the rushing water at the sides of Anor Londo's streets in defeated clumps.

"Bah!" Tarkus barked. "Too easy! This might be the first time combat has actually bored me! You get a kill there, Henrik?"

"Aye," the boy confirmed.

"Well... perhaps not a total waste of time then."

Solaire prodded one of the dead things at his feet with the tip of his blade. He shook his head. "They've got no fight left in them. Whatever drove them from the Archives has driven their spirits from them as well."

"Then what threat do they pose?" Walder questioned. "I don't mean to be disrespectful Sir Knight, but if they've got not fight in them... is there truly any harm in leaving the rest of this ruined city for the dogs to pick at and be done with it?"

Solaire sighed. It wasn't in his nature to leave a job undone, but the boy had the right of it. He thought of a warm meal and a roof overhead to shield them from the endless rains. He thought of listening to Abby, perhaps, tell him of the things she'd learned in Vinheim's famed Dragon School or one of the books he'd brought her from the Archives beside a warm fire. Mostly, though, Solaire thought of the Sun: that wonderfully enticing light that had guided him since the moment of his birth, and now which awaited to rise on a new Lordran, free from an aggressive army of hollow soldiers. He'd like to be beside the people he cared about when it rose.

"Well?" Tarkus asked. "As much as I hate to admit it, the little punk might be right on this one. There ain't no worthy combat to be had here. S'ppose we could hunt down a few more packs before night's end if we put some leg into it, but the further we travel, the further we'll have to make our feet carry us in return."

Solaire gave the perimeter a last sweep of his eyes, turned on the soaked and tired men at his rear, and gave a nod. "Alright. We turn back for the Parish."

A wave of relief washed over every last one of them, a few even so much as cracking a smile. Tarkus slung his massive greatsword over his shoulder and slid it into his back-sheath. "Aye. If the Gods are good, we'll have a warm meal and a chalice of wine in our bellies before sunrise."

"If the Gods aren't good?" Henrik asked.  
"Well... then piss on 'em!" Tarkus said with a roar of hearty laughter that

was contagious enough to bring a grin to even Solaire's face.

With that, they gathered themselves, sheathed their weapons, and headed back to make the long haul through Anor Londo's twisting and turning streets, mindful to keep their footing even on the slippery cobblestone underfoot as the rain sloshed down upon them.

They had made it further than Solaire would have thought uninterrupted when a cold and queer wind swept upon them so sudden and fierce, it forced the knight to pull a sharp gasp of breath and reach for the building at his side to steady himself. Henrik was beside him at once, checking on his condition, but Solaire waved the boy off and raised a closed fist for a silent halt. Across the street, Tarkus pressed his team into a shadowed nook of a building and frowned across the gap between them. When he saw Solaire looking, he shrugged his shoulders as if asking 'What's wrong?'.

The wind came again, and this time, every last one of his men, Tarkus included, felt it. The twin torches carried at the rear of either team flickered in a bizarre swirl and then extinguished; only a faint twist of smoke rising from their blackened stems as evidence they'd been there at all.

"What in Izalith...?" One of the men whispered behind him. "Light that torch back up!"

"No," Solaire commanded. His stomach had upturned itself and his skin was lifted in a wave of gooseflesh. He made his suddenly-dried throat take a swallow and leaned out to glimpse down the road, where that other-worldly wind had, seemingly, birthed from. With the torches out and the night far from over, only blackness awaited his gaze. He held his eyes there anyway, listening as the relentless smattering of rain kept the night alive with its song. From some distant pocket of sky, thunder rumbled a deep and ominous growl, as if the storm's hunger was on the rise, and a few moments later, lightning cracked and cast the street in its glow.

The glimpse of the thing was so brief, if he had blinked, Solaire surely would have missed it. He hadn't, though, and what he saw was enough to freeze his breath in his chest. It's alone, an inner voice tried calming him. The thing is alone. Take solace in that, at least. He turned to face Tarkus, and saw the big man across the road must have glimpsed it as well, for the expression upon his face was uncharacteristically disconcerted.

"What was it? I didn't see!" Henrik whispered.

Solaire turned on him. "Darkwraith."

"Darkwraith!?" Walder echoed. The young man's face had gone the color of milk left out to spoil. "Like a... like a..." Whatever his words were going

to be, they were lost in another rumble of thunder, and Solaire was quick to lean back out before the lightning came to make sure his mind hadn't betrayed him.

When the bolt split the sky, and the streets bathed in its light once more, his fear was confirmed: a lone figure, marching down the road, all in black, a mask of black bone wrapped around the thing's face, a black blade sharpened to a maddening point at the tip resting in its hand beside it, eyes that were black and hollow and searching.

"It is a Darkwraith," Solaire told them, his hand gripping around the hilt of his sword so tightly, his knuckles ached. "Alone, thank the Sun, but not a threat to be taken lightly."

"Just one?" Walder asked. "There's eight of us!" "You've never faced a Darkwraith," Solaire said. "No," Walder answered.

"I wasn't asking," Solaire told him. "I know you haven't, or you would not have said what you just said. That thing fights with inhuman ability. It was human, once, but whatever humanity it held has long since fled it when the thing followed the four king's into the dark abyss that consumed them."

"What do we do?" Henrik asked.

Solaire looked across the street. Tarkus' disconcerted look had been replaced with one of quiet determination. He took up his greatsword in two hands and nodded. Solaire returned the gesture before telling Henrik and the rest, "Stay here. Do not join the fight."

Together, Solaire and Tarkus emerged from their hidden flanks, weapons gripped before them. They pressed in on the streets center and stepped forth into the rain to meet the demonic creature that stalked near. The Darkwraith's head cocked on its side, but its approach did not slow in the slightest upon glimpsing them. Its sword lifted, almost lazily, up in front of its chest plate and pointed forward at the two of them.

"...I'm going to take that thing's bloody head off," Tarkus growled, but Solaire thought, perhaps, his friend was trying to mask fear with anger.

"We take it together, Tarkus. Don't let your emotions steer your actions. You and I both know what kind of threat that thing poses."

"What in Izalith is it doing all the way out here?" Tarkus asked, keeping a steely glare upon the wraith.

"That, I do not know," Solaire admitted. "Let us just make sure it's journey ends here."

"Aye," Tarkus agreed.

Thunder rumbled overhead and Solaire and Tarkus used the one advantage they had: their numbers. They spread apart to cover the creature's flanks, laying their boots over one another in precise and meticulous fashion. The Darkwraith's masked face looked between them as they grew wider apart, but if the tactic had unnerved the thing, it revealed no such worry. It simply switched to a two-handed grip around its black sword, bent its knees, and dropped into a battle stance.

"Here you bastard!" Tarkus shouted, rushing along the far side of the street. Solaire knew the tactic well, so when the creature spun to face on him, the knight rushed for the thing's flank.

Tarkus feigned a swing of his mighty greatsword, sending the wraith back on its heels and right into the path of Solaire's charge. The knight lifted his sunlight straight sword and made to jab the black monster in its side. The wraith twisted itself around and smacked his attack away with the flat side of its sword, sending a clang reverberating through Anor Londo's dead streets.

Solaire was not so foolish as to put all his weight into the strike, so his footing was not lost, but the wraith swung for him with inhuman speed and he'd barely had time to bring his sword up in defense before it was clashing against it. Behind the thing's shoulder, Tarkus pressed in with an overhead swing. The Darkwraith, perhaps sensing the attack with some dark, clandestine, magic, side-stepped, leaving the greatsword to bury its way into the rain-slicked cobblestone underfoot. Tarkus didn't know how to strike without sending all his weight into each blow, so the miss tumbled him forward.

The wraith jabbed for his friend's exposed side-

-and Solaire caught the attack against the hilt of his sword, parried, and made for a riposte.

The wraith took his sword in its side, a spurt of blood as black as the sky above spraying from the wound, but the creature revealed no sign of pain and simply leaned back to remove the blade from its belly. Solaire pressed the attack with a flurry of strikes, but the thing caught each one against his sword, sending a chorus of clangs to bounce down the deserted streets behind them.

Tarkus rushed in from his side, and Solaire feigned a strike to clear the man some room. Tarkus swung. The wraith deflected. Solaire jabbed. The wraith deflected. Tarkus feigned, side-stepped, swung again. The wraith deflected. Solaire tried attacking at the same time as his friend with a swipe for the monster's head. Somehow, someway, the wraith deflected.

Tarkus, perhaps in frustration, bellowed a war-cry, dropped his shoulder,

and charged the forsaken knight. It raised a knee at the last moment into his belly, however, and Tarkus' air was choked off in a garbled cry. The wraith sent a boot into his side, and Tarkus slid across the wet cobblestone to collide with a building's side.

Solaire brought his sword down in a vertical slash, sure that the creature could not have the stamina to raise its own blade in defense. And yet: it had. The wraith tossed his attack off as easily as if it had been the very first of the fight and its boot found his belly shortly after.

Solaire crashed into the building behind him, his helm slamming the stone wall with such force, his vision rattled and black blankets briefly swam up to blind him. His legs lost their strength, and he slid to his ass. His helm had been set oddly from the blow, and he was quick to claw up and tear it from his head to return his vision to him.

When it had, the Darkwraith was hovering over him, its sword lifted and ready to drive into his chest.

"ARGH!" Henrik wailed, dashing forward to stop the attack.

"No!" Solaire cried.

The boy's attempt was easily swatted away by the wraith. The thing swung for him, and Henrik's block came so late, the wraith's sword sent the boy's own flying from his hands. The creature switched to a one-handed grip, and Solaire saw, with horror, its now-free hand took on a ghostly, pale, glow from the tips of its black glove to its wrist.

Henrik could only gape his mouth as the hand reached for his chest and took hold of him. He might've been trying to scream, but when the wraith's arm shook, and that ghastly pale glow pulsed up around him, any fight the boy had in him fled in an instant.

Solaire clambered to his feet, made a desperate grab for his sword lying in a puddle of rain at his side, and brought it upwards without so much as aiming the blow: there was no time.

His blade struck true. It slashed up right through the Darkwraith's arm, removing the limb from the creature's body. The pale glow vanished in an instant and, for the first time, the creature screamed such a hideous, shrill, agonizing, demonic, sound, Solaire felt his ears ready to burst after only a second of listening to it.

He didn't have to listen long. Tarkus' next swing of his greatsword took the monster's head clean from its shoulders. It sailed into a building before dropping silently to the very puddle Solaire's sword had been in. For one, mad, moment, the body remained standing, as if defiance of death itself, then, with a gust of cold wind that had marked the things arrival, it collapsed, perhaps marking the thing's departure.

"Gods..." Tarkus muttered, leaning upon his knees to catch his breath. "I warned the bastard his head was mine."

"Henrik..." Solaire called to the boy who had collapsed in the street.

Henrik did not answer.

The other's came out of hiding, each wearing a matching expression of terror frozen upon their face, and the lot of them swarmed around their fallen brother as the rain fell upon them.

"Oh, what in Izalith!" Walder wailed. "Where's his bloody eyes!?" He rushed for the side of the street and doubled over to vomit.

Solaire kneeled beside his squire and rolled the boy's face his way. "Praise the Sun," he whispered reverently upon glimpsing what Walder had glimpsed. Henrik's skin was pulled so tight to his face, it resembled the skull mask the very wraith who had done him in wore. Where the boy's eyes should have been, only sockets, dark and empty, remained. His mouth was locked open around a crushed jaw in a soundless scream that would now carry for an eternity.

"...bastard..." Tarkus growled.

Thunder roared overhead.

"I won't leave his body," Solaire told them; no one else seemed to know what to say. They only stood staring dejectedly down upon Henrik's corpse. Walder was still spewing his dinner into a puddle. "He was my squire, once, and a good man. He deserves a proper burial."

"Aye," Tarkus agreed. "We will-"

Solaire lifted his gaze to his friend. Tarkus' eyes were locked down the road. Solaire turned and saw nothing but the blackness of night awaiting. "What did-"

Thunder sounded again and Tarkus grabbed him by the shoulder, spinning him to face the road. A moment later, when the lightning flashed, he saw them.

Five more Darkwraiths, stalking forth in the night.

Chapter 42

Ben's favorite part about dying was the fleeting, adrenaline-fueled, moment just before the end, and as he hurdled past the tall oak trees of the Darkroot Garden-plummeting from the Parish walkways above, the leaf-littered ground racing up at him in a blur-he felt more alive in those final moments before his death than, perhaps, he'd ever had in his life.

The moment happened and was gone, as it had been the four previous times he'd made the jump. If there was something to be remembered about it, Ben did not know, and even trying to remember made his head spin, so when he returned from the flames, he did not dwell on how, exactly, the things had brought him back, just that they had.

Warmth wrapped every inch of him, and the world swam out of the dark and into a pretty splash of colors. His breath exploded in his chest, as if it had been sealed away for an eternity and was just then being released. Sound rippled up from some black void to fill his ears, a sweet, distorted, symphony of chaotic noise that coalesced into voices. Solid ground formed beneath his feet. His body cooled, the rubber feeling in his limbs fled, his vision focused, and he was back.

The first thing his gaze fell upon was Pharis. Her pale blue eyes that had once looked upon him with such fear were filled now with a different emotion, and Ben thought it might have been admiration, but it might have been something more, too. The children beside her stalked forth, casting wide-eyed and awe-stricken gazes upon him as their little hands reached out to tug at the hem of his vest, testing, perhaps, for the reality of the thing. Ben grinned and ruffled the hair of one of them.

"Wow..." a boy whispered.  
"Came right out the fire," a girl beside him added. "How do you do it?" Another asked.

"I am the Chosen Undead," Ben explained to the growing crowd of young ones that circled in around the bonfire outside the Parish. "I cannot be killed."

"Not ever?" The boy whose hair he'd ruffled questioned below him.

"Not ever," Ben told him, though he saw the witch, Quelana, narrow her eyes upon him from shadowed nook across the bonfire she'd been watching from and give a slight shake of her head before turning and disappearing back inside the church.

"What else can you do?" The boy asked.  
His eyes moved from the church to the child's head, where Ben's bare

hand laid. "Oh... I've got a few other tricks up my sleeve," he said, and the image of both Nico and Gwyndolin's lifeless faces flashed upon the child's own. Ben laughed. "Perhaps you'll see them some other day."

A shared groan of disappointment ran through the group of children.

"Scram ya little bastards," Patches shouted from further down the walkway. Ben lifted his head to see the Hyena approaching from the Parish, a teenaged boy clutched by the back of his neck in tow. "Go on! Scram!"

The children, who were no stranger to Patches and his shouting, obeyed immediately, splitting around Ben to hurry back towards the church. Patches watched them go with a satisfied grin as he sauntered forth. When he neared, he shoved his teenaged captive forward. The young man nearly lost his footing till Ben caught him and straightened him.

"What's going on?" Ben asked.

Patches' grin widened. "Found our little trouble-making pal here lookin' for more trouble out by the front of the church. He wasn't exactly thrilled to see me. Hee-hee."

Ben studied the apprehensive lines drawn taught around the kid's face, and after a moment, realized who it was. "Thomas," he said, and the teen nodded. Ben's brow furrowed; before him stood the boy who'd carelessly burned the wood the previous day, and whom had almost caused a fight between Quelana and himself.

"He was sniffin' around the dog meat," Patches said. "Little shit was probably lookin' to poison us."

"I was not!" Thomas cried.

"Shut up," Patches growled. He lifted his eyes to Ben's. "Now... about that justice we were fixin' to serve..."

"Please..." Thomas whimpered.

"I said shut your mouth, boy!" Patches shouted, stepping forth and raising his hand.

Ben raised a hand to halt the blow. Patches did so immediately and that feeling of power, of control, he wielded never ceased to spark a feeling of joy within Ben. He looked upon the teenager and lowered to a knee so they were eye-level. "You made quite a mistake yesterday," Ben explained calmly.

"I didn't mean to! I-"  
"Don't interrupt me," Ben said, injecting just enough severity in his voice

to still the kid's tongue. "How old are you, Thomas?" "...thirteen."

"Old enough to know better, then," Ben said. "Patches... heat your dagger over that bonfire."

Patches licked his lips. "Yeah..." he said, shuffling past the two of them to the bonfire. Thomas' eyes followed him. The kid's hand reached up to pick at his dirty little ear as he shuffled his feet.

"I was twelve when my father branded me," Ben told him. "It hurts, but it teaches."

Thomas only lowered his head.

"Someone very wise told me once," Pharis' voice came over his shoulder, and Ben turned to see the woman had joined beside him, "that true power is having it... and wielding it with responsibility."

Ben frowned. "Who could you have known that was very wise? You already admitted that your uneducated and an orphan at that. Were did your wisdom come from? One of those fools of the Forest Hunter covenant you've spent your days and nights with? A tree, perhaps? A bush?"

Pharis' mouth fell agape and she took a step back, as if in recoil from a physical blow, and Ben knew he'd hurt her. Before the two could have a further exchange, however, Patches returned, whistling a cheerful tune and dangling his dagger before him. The steel blade had a red tint to it. He laid the hilt in Ben's waiting palm.

Thomas whimpered upon glimpsing the weapon and he gave a pleading shake of his head.

"Hold your hand out," Ben commanded.

The kid hesitated, but when his eyes flicked to Patches towering balefully beside him, he groaned and lifted a trembling arm up between them. Ben snatched it at the wrist and turned it so the knuckles faced the drizzling, grey, skies above. Ben held the teen's eyes till they found his own; the rain dampening the kid's shaggy blond hair around his face. "Are you truly sorry for what you did?" Ben asked.

Thomas nodded at once. "Yes! Please, I am! I swear it to the Gods!"

Ben looked to Pharis. Her icy eyes were narrowed, and her expression was not dissimilar from the one Quelana had cast upon him earlier. It was the look of disappointment. Ben knew it will; he'd seen it on his father enough times growing up. "Whomever told you that saying about power, Pharis... they were right," he said, nodding. "Responsibility is important."

Pharis' look softened. A smile began curling at the corners of her lips.

It faded fast when the flesh atop Thomas' hand hissed as Ben pressed the smoldering dagger into it. The boy might've screamed if Patches hadn't clamped his hand over his mouth, so only the hissing filled the Parish walkway as the rain came down around them. The air smelled of the relentless storms overhead and, now, of the child's burnt flesh. Ben held Pharis' eyes the entire time.

-o-o-o-

Night fell, and the church ate. Andre's meal had been another, bitter, rotten, stew, but food was food and so Ben held his tongue while he endured it. The dinner conversation was centered mostly around Solaire and the growing concerns that he and his men were missing, or injured, or worse. Ben watched Abby flash her little, friendly, smile upon the people around her seated down at the opposite end of the longtable, but if Ben stared too long, the sickening display would leave his stomach in far worse shape than Andre's stew ever could. He turned to Pharis instead, but she was sipping at her stew, blank-expression upon her face, and if she'd noticed his gaze, she made no attempt to acknowledge it. Ben's gloved hand curled into a fist between them, but he said nothing.

Not long after dinner had started, Quelana excused herself and disappeared out into the rains beneath the church's front entrance; a bowl of steaming stew clutched between her pale hands. The witch barely ever ate, and Ben doubted of the lousy meal was for her at all. She's taking it to him, he realized, a fresh surge of anger boiling his blood.

Ben turned to Patches. "It's not fair that Lautrec is permitted to drink our wine and eat our food when he does nothing but hang around out there getting drunk and wasting arrows."

Patches raised his brow and nodded. "Aye," he agreed around a mouthful of stew. "Maybe it's about time someone did something about that, hmm?"

"Maybe," Ben agreed, the faces of those he'd killed flashing before him once again. "...maybe."

While the pathetic excuse for a 'dessert' was being passed around (small haunches of stale bread soaked in honey), Pharis excused herself and stood. When Ben called to her, she ignored him and disappeared out the church's side entrance. He sighed, tossed his kerchief down to the empty bowl before him, and followed after her.

Outside, she stood alone in the drizzling rains, leaned out over the stone barrier overlooking the Darkroot Garden; the warm light from the torches inside the church crawling up just far enough along the ground to scratch at her boots and lower legs. Ben walked beside her and leaned out as well, but after a moment of staring her way, she said nothing, and Ben shook

his head. "You can't be serious, right? I've heard you speak just as foul- mouthed as Patches. Saw you act just as cruel, too. Have you forgotten your treatment of me when I was your prisoner in Sen's Fortress? Surely, you can't be upset that I-"

"I got a soft spot in my heart for kids, alright," she finally spoke. "I remember what it was like to be little and alone and afraid. It's... well, it's shit is what it is."

Ben plucked the glove from his hand and held it out over the forest below for the moon to illuminate. "Look," he said, nodding to the jagged scars that still stood visible atop his flesh. "It doesn't hurt as much as you'd think. And the kid will learn from it. I promise you that."

Pharis' eyes moved from his hand, to his face, and back to the forest. She sighed, but voiced no further protest. They stood like that for awhile, watching the rain drench the treetops, until, finally, she turned on him and asked, "What's it like?"

"What?"

"...dying," she spoke the word quietly, as if she had to be careful with it, lest it leap from her lips and come for her. "I watched you jump to your death five times today, and every time you came back, the look of elation on your face had grown. Can something so terrible really feel so wonderful?"

Ben shrugged. "I like it. It's... not easy to explain, though." He looked to her arms and felt a grin take his face. He laid his bare hand atop her own. "I can show you what it feels like if you want."

"Stop it!" She screeched at once, jerking away from him. Ben caught her by the wrist though and kept her in place. "Ben! Let go!"

He laughed. "You want to know, don't you?" He rubbed his fingers against her arm. "Just give me a moment. I have to warm my power up a bit."

"Ben!" She wailed, raising a fist between them.

Ben's laughter rose. He released her and put his hands up. "Alright, alright! I surrender. That little fist of yours is far more frightening than you know. I wouldn't want to die a sixth time today beneath its mighty blows."

Pharis' eyes flicked briefly to her fist before returning and narrowing shrewdly on Ben's own. "You're making fun of me!"

"Yes," he admitted. "Very perceptive."

Pharis glowered at him, but after a moment, her lips began betraying the expression, and a grin rose upon them. She took a step closer to him and

cocked her head to the side. "...have you ever been with a woman?"

"Yes," Ben answered. He had. Her name was Talia. She was his father's cook. It had been awkward and brief and had only occurred one time, but Pharis didn't need to know about all that, so Ben simply left his 'yes' to suffice.

Pharis folded her arms across her chest and surveyed him. She bit at her lip. "...do you find me attractive?"

Ben grinned. "You? Nah. Hard to find the woman who kicked you in the gut while you were her prisoner attractive. Those are the sort of things that stay with a man, you know. Also... your ears are funny-looking."

Pharis frowned and reached for her ears, prompting more laughter from Ben. When she caught on to the joke, she slowly removed her hands from her head and marched up before him to shove him back into the stone barrier. "You're cruel," she said.

"If I'm so cruel, then why are you about to kiss me?"

"Kiss you? I'm not-" He leaned forward and covered her mouth with his own. When his hands reached for her waist, Ben felt her posture stiffen, as if in defense, but the moment passed quickly and she lifted her own hands to his face and kissed him back. Her lips were warm and moist and full against his own and it wasn't long before Ben was ready to add a second name beside Talia's. "Come," he said, pulling away from her lips and taking her by the hand to lead her somewhere they could be alone.

Pharis' breathing had grown labored. She simply nodded and moved to follow him-

-but froze after two steps and cast a grimace over his shoulder. "Oh, Gods. He was watching. What a queer man," she whispered.

Ben followed the line of her eyes. Standing near the stairs of the walkway a bit further on, bathed in moonlight, rain, and his own violet robes, the sorcerer Griggs stood: alone and smiling and watching. Ben's anger rose. The man had been tagging along everywhere he went since they'd arrived at the church, clinging to his shadow as dearly as the pyromancer clung to the witch's. Ben hadn't minded at first (though the man's odd smile was a bit disconcerting) but he could only tolerate so much. And now... now the man had ruined a moment, Ben thought, that had been going rather well for him. He squeezed Pharis' hand and told her, "Go wait for me in my room. This won't take long."

"Be mindful of that one," she said. "He disturbs me."  
With that, she left, and Ben and the man were alone.  
When Ben closed the gap between them, standing on the rain-slicked

stone at the base of the stairs to look up at the sorcerer, he saw, if anything, the man's smile had widened. His eyes were a pale shade of green, the lashes long like like a woman's, and they gleamed in the moonlight.

"You have to leave me alone, Griggs," Ben said quickly before the man's strangeness unsettled him. "You might not have a tongue, but I can see two ears adorned to your queer head. Use them now and hear me: stay away from me."

Griggs' head cocked slightly on its side. Otherwise, he looked as if he hadn't heard at all.

Ben sighed. "Just... keep your distance, sorcerer." He turned and marched off, his boots slapping int the puddles underfoot. His thoughts were on Pharis, and what she might look like standing before him without any clothing, when the voice froze him in place.

"They don't respect you, Chosen One."

Thunder grumbled overhead.

Ben spun back, unsheathed a dagger, and crouched for stealth. His eyes scanned the shadowed areas around Griggs and the side of the church. He swallowed and stalked forth with the dagger held before him. "Griggs!" He whispered. "Who is out here with us!? Point them out!"

"Tis only us, Chosen. Only us," Griggs answered; his voice soft and strange and accented with an unplaceable vernacular.

Ben's eyes moved slowly to the man in the violet robes. Griggs' smile widened.

Ben rushed across the gap between them, shoved the imposter to the ground, and pressed his dagger to the man's throat. "What in Izalith is this?" He demanded. "Who are you? Where is Griggs? Why have you been following me!? Speak or may the Gods help you!"

If the man was frightened by the threats, it did not show. He went on smiling his queer smile, even as the rain laid upon his brow and Ben's dagger upon his throat. "I am your friend, my Chosen. Griggs is dead. I killed him. I've been following you to watch over you. Any more questions, my Chosen?"

Ben's head spun with the information the man had so bluntly laid before him. He wasn't sure what was a lie and what wasn't. He wasn't even sure who the liar was. "Why do they all call you Griggs?"

"I look like him." "Why?"

"His body wasn't in use. I happened to need a body. I took it."

"Then who are you!" Ben demanded, pressing the dagger tighter to the man's throat.

"If I told you my name was Logan, what would you say?"

Ben scoffed. "I'd say you're a liar. Or Lautrec is. He claims his shotel tore the mad sorcerer's throat out. Abby was there and she swears it true."

"That it did," the man said. "Quite painful it was. And the attack would have killed me if I didn't have the necklace I wear beneath my robes on. Go on, Chosen. Look at it. I won't move."

Ben narrowed his eyes upon the man. He kept the dagger trained to his throat as he reached his free hand into the man's robe and fished out a necklace. He held it as far as the slack allowed, and in the pale moonlight he saw a small, unimpressive, crystal tethered to its end. "Is this supposed to mean something to me?"

"No," the man said. "It means quite a lot to me, however. It is a fractured bit of the great dragon Seath's Primordial Crystal. It, along with the dragon's blood that flows through my veins and this man's corpse I wear around me like a second robe, are the only things keeping an old, old, man like me alive."

Ben laughed. "You're mad," he said. "If that insane tale were true, why in Izalith would you admit to something like that? I could smash this crystal right now. What would happen then, you mad fool?"

"I would perish alongside it," the man admitted.

Ben smirked. "A shame for you, then. Just so happens, I'm in the crystal- smashing mood." He closed his fist around the thing and made to rip it from the man's chest.

"If you kill Abby you will become the God this world needs to save it," the man said hastily, halting Ben's arm from tearing his necklace away.

Ben stared down upon him. He ran his brow against the sleeve of his jerkin to clear damp hair from his vision. "What did you just say?"

"I've done a lot of listening these last eleven days," the man said. "I'm good at blending in, slipping into shadows, becoming invisible. I keep my ears open and my mouth shut and it goes a long way to feeding my hungry mind. I know you are the true Chosen, Benjamin. I know about the gift of death you wield in your hands. And I know that both your's and Abby's strength waxes and wanes against one another's like some tug-of-war played by those cruel Gods above. I've studied the history of Lordran for a long, long, time, and I'm now certain that together we can end the maddening cycle that has plagued it for an eternity."

"Together?"

"I built a machine. It... did not do what I thought it would," the man said. "Instead, it showed me a glimpse of another world. Perhaps, our creators' next creation... perhaps a previous one. I'm not sure. What I am sure of, is that it has confirmed everything I believed in. Our creators left us that machine. They wanted us to see the freedom that awaited us. They desire the cycle to end just as much as I do. Chosen... it is not coincidental that we've come into each other's company. You and I are destined to break the shackles laid upon this world. Together!"

Ben shook his head. The man's ramblings were too much to comprehend. "You're insane."

"They called me that at the Duke's Archives as well. Called me it all the while I built my machine that they thought would reveal nothing but wound up revealing everything! I can help you, Chosen. I am wise and intelligent, but old and frail. You are young and bold and courageous and powerful. Together we would be unstoppable!"

Ben frowned. "Unstoppable to whom? And to what end?"

"To Lordran's end. And beyond. To this world and the next. To all the worlds, perhaps. With I as a King... and you as a Dark Lord."

Another sharp crash of thunder growled across the purple and black skies. The rain picked up.

"Lordran fails around us," the man continued. "The cold has fled, but the end has not yet been staved away. Gwyn must be dealt with... and the heretics inside that church that would deny your rightful place as their lord need to be dealt with. Starting with the girl... starting with Abby."

"I'm not going to assassinate her," Ben told him. "I'm not some murderer."

"No," the man agreed. "But you have killed before. I heard you and your friend Patches speaking of it. The first time by accident. Certainly not your fault. The second time, you killed to save lives. Noble. Just. True. The traits of any Lord." The man's eyes narrowed. "Kill again, Chosen. This time to save all of Lordran from the slavery that awaits it. If Abby lives... and the Kiln of the First Flame is restored... the cycle continues. Forever. If she dies... then your power grows beyond what any man, woman, or child has ever looked upon. You will break the cycle. And together we will lead what is left of Lordran into the worlds that await beyond this one. Like the one I glimpsed in my machine. We will be conquerers!"

Ben released the man if, for no other reason, just to put space between the two of them. He was starting to feel ill, and all the words that had just filled his head were racing around and around like... like a cycle. He walked to the stone railing and leaned upon it to close his eyes and slow his spinning head.

The man-whoever he was-joined beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's alright, my son. I'm not asking you to commit yourself to my plans here tonight. Take your time, Chosen. You are, after all, my future Lord."

Lord, the word echoed in Ben's mind. It sounded so much better than 'Boy'.

"You know, Chosen," the man went on. "A Lord is a leader. And a leader can obtain loyalty in more ways than one. If Abby were in charge? She'd make the people around her love her. That's how she'd rule. But that isn't the only way to rule. You can make your subjects fear you, as well, and, oh, do subjects fear a powerful leader... like you would be."

Ben faced the man.  
The sorcerer smiled. "Just a thought."  
"Abby is like me... she can't just die," Ben said.

"Ah, but she can. The bonfire that returns you two to Lordran can easily be disassembled. In fact, I can do it myself. Someone will find out sooner or later, of course, but... there would be an awfully big window open before they did. How simple it would be to take a girl's life in that brief time..."

Ben swallowed. His throat had run dry and his legs felt weak beneath him. "...if I kill her, they'll look at me as some cowardly assassin... they'll never follow me... even if they do fear me."

"True," the man admitted. "That's why I'm not suggesting you kill her like some cowardly assassin. I'm not telling you to run a blade across her throat while the girl sleeps, I'm telling you to make a display of your dominance over her. Reveal your gift, Benjamin, and put the death you hold in your hands into her. Do it in front of everyone so they can witness their future Lord's power. They might be angry with you... some might even hate you... but they will all fear you. I promise it."

Ben's arms began to tremble against the barrier. He released it and pulled a deep breath of cool night air into his lungs to steady himself. "I... I have to sleep... I'm tired," he told the man. "Whoever you are, just... stay away from me for awhile."

"As you say, my Lord," the man said, bowing. "My offer will always stand for you."

Ben was halfway to the church, the torchlight glowing upon the stone there taking on the appearance of a warm, safe, hand reaching out to him to pull him from the rain and the madness that he had just listened to, when he halted. He spun back on the man and shook his head. "You can't be Logan! Even with that crystal, I don't... dead is dead!"

The man laughed. "Dead is an absolute, my Lord, and absolutes are for the weak-minded. Things don't truly begin and end, or live and die, they just... change." The man flipped his hand across his face, up and down, and in the brief window while it was up, his face was no longer his own, but another man's entirely.

Ben's mouth fell agape.

The man-Logan, Ben thought, it must be true.-laughed a soft, sweet, laughter.

Ben turned and quickly headed back inside, eager to be rid of the maddening sound. He now knew why Griggs had been constantly wearing that queer smile of his.

The man had quite the secret.

Chapter 43

When she woke and saw the shadowed figure of a man sitting in the corner of the room, Abby thought-for one brief, maddening, moment-that there was a top hat resting on the figure's head, and that Chester had risen from the snows outside the Archives to return to her; to make her as dead as she'd made him.

Then the figure moved and she saw the 'top hat' was but a shadow, and as the small room's candlelight illuminated the figure's face, she saw 'Chester' was actually Ben. He leaned forth on the chair he was perched in and fixed he with a measured look; his hands laced against one another in his lap.

Abby rose on the pile of blankets she'd been sleeping on and wrapped a few loose sheets around her torso. She was wearing her small clothes, but Ben's dark eyes holding so intently upon her own made her desire to be further shielded by something. The sheets, for then, sufficed. She rubbed a fist into her eye to clear the sleepers that had latched on and coughed. When she squinted back towards the corner of the room, Ben hadn't budged, only went on staring. Faintly, she could hear the soft trickle of rain on the church's rooftop above, otherwise: silence.

For whatever reason, though, she was not afraid, and after a long moment where neither of them spoke to one another, Ben said, "A man asked me to murder you tonight."

Abby stared at him; there was not much else she could think to do after such a blunt confession.

Ben nodded slowly. "In truth? I considered it. I... don't like you. You've been celebrated as something special since the moment you and I were retrieved from the Undead Asylum. First by the witch, then by Domhnall, then by everyone else. I, on the other hand, have gone mostly unnoticed. Recent events have changed that with a few people, admittedly, but the majority of them downstairs? They will never share the love for me that they have for you. That's fine. I don't need their love. But I do not like you. I thought you should know that."

Ben's long, calm, manner of speaking had driven the last bits of sleep that clung to her mind, so that by the time he'd finished, Abby was as awake as she'd be. She reached to her face and tucked a lock of hair that had just grown long enough to be tucked back behind her ear. Ben watched her, but if he was waiting for her to speak some reply, she did not think she was ready to oblige him.

"I'm telling you this," Ben began again, "because after thinking about it for a long time, I realized as much as I don't like you, I don't particularly want to kill you, either. You've been quiet and stayed out of my way since we've

arrived here. For that... I suppose you have my gratitude. Do you know what I do want?"

Abby stared.

Ben leaned forward a bit more in his chair. "I want Lordran. I want to be the one who fixes it. And I want you staying out of my way. We're both Chosen, even if the men and women of this church tend to forget that fact, but only one of us is needed to face off against Gwyn. Only one of us can be Lordran's savior. It's going to be me. In the brief time we've spent in each other's company, if anything, I can say I know you're not greedy. I know you don't care which of us saves this failing world as long as it's saved. Good for you. I do care. So stay out of my way, keep your mouth shut, and let me save it. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," Abby said, and being the first word out of her mouth since she'd woken, it came far weaker and coarse than she would have liked. When Ben nodded and looked ready to stand and depart, she spoke again. "Who asked you to kill me?"

Ben's eyes found her's. He stared, sighed, sat back down. "In truth? I'm not entirely sure. I have an idea, though. If it is who I think it is... you don't need to worry about it. I'll deal with this person myself."

Not a very reassuring answer, Abby thought. She looked to her hands. They were calloused from the woodwork she'd been doing with Domhnall by day. She rubbed them together. "We don't have to be enemies you know, Ben," she said, lifting her gaze back to him. "You're right. I don't care if it's you that saves Lordran. I won't get in your way if that's truly what you want."

Ben stared at her from the shadows with that placid, reserved, expression of his that masked so well whatever he was thinking or feeling. "It's what I want," he finally answered. His eyes moved beside her makeshift 'bed'. "What are you doing with all those books?"

Abby looked to the books at her side. They were stacked higher than herself while seated on the blankets. "Reading them," she said. "Looking for... answers."

"Answers?"

She rubbed her hands together again. She hadn't told anyone-not even Quelana or Domhnall-her feelings on the matter. But when she found Ben's waiting face in the dark, for whatever reason, she told him. "I've had this, sort of, idea stirring in my head since I nearly died at the Archives. It came to me when I returned from the flame. What if... what if you and I aren't truly the way to save Lordran? What if... what if there's something else?"

Ben, finally, revealed an emotion. He furrowed his brow. "What are you

talking about?"

"Something Logan said to me, or rather, showed me when I was in his captivity," she said. That was how she came to think of her time now at the Archives. When she looked back on it, she could see Logan spinning his web all around her from the moment they'd arrived. Even without chains upon her, Abby had been his captive. The man, if nothing, was crafty. "Logan spoke to me often," she continued. "Most of the conversations, I can't remember... as if they were some fading, ephemeral, dream. The first I do, though. He showed me two closed hands, Ben, and told me to pick the one with a bit of candle in it. The first two times I chose, there was nothing in his hands. The third time, both were filled with a chunk of candle."

Ben's frown deepened. "So? I don't understand what-"

"He said," Abby interjected, "that Lordran was playing the same game upon us. That, perhaps, we were only being given the illusion of choice, but that the outcome was rigged from the start."

Ben's eyes narrowed upon her. "Logan said that. You are sure?" Abby nodded.

"...a mad man's ramblings," Ben said. "Nothing more. If Logan were alive today... I'm sure his opinion would have changed on that matter."

"Maybe," Abby admitted. "Maybe not. I only know that before everything that happened at the Archives, I was sure that lighting the bonfire at the Kiln of the First Flame was the one true path to Lordran's salvation. I had never considered leaving it to darkness once Gwyn was dealt with. But... what if Lautrec had the right of it from the beginning? What if the world is just a series of 'cycles'? What if by lighting this fire or not lighting this fire, we're convinced we're making a choice, but... what if we are the ones responsible for the cycle itself?"

Ben shook his head. "Whatever 'cycle' both Logan and Lautrec spoke of, I assure you it has already been broken. Look at this weather around us. Look at the peculiar nature of the hollow. Of the deformities of the demons. Of you and I. Of our, well, your gift. It's over, Abby, and Lordran is ready for a new era and a new Lord."

"A new 'Lord'?" Abby echoed.

A strange expression crossed Ben's face, but it was gone and replaced with one of confidence in an instant. "A new savior is what I meant."

"But what if it's not?" Abby questioned. "What if this is all some... some play to ensure the cycle starts again? What if there is another option?"

"There's not," Ben snapped. His look darkened as it moved to the books

beside her again. "Is that what you've been doing in here? Looking for a way to rob us of our importance in your little books?"

"Our importance? The only thing important is Lordran's safety. I thought we agreed on that."

"We agreed it needs saving," Ben corrected her. "And I'm telling you I know how to save it."

"You're telling me you want to be a hero," Abby said.

"The two go hand-in-hand. Lordran's future is tied to the Chosen. Everyone knows that."

"And if it isn't?" Abby asked. "It is."

"And you won't hear it any other way? Even if I uncover some proof or evidence within one of these books?"

"Books," Ben hissed the word with contempt. "What are books but tales and stories and make-believe. For all you know, every word on every page is a damned lie. You're wasting your time. And now, you're wasting mine, too." He stood.

"Ben," Abby called to him, but he only marched to the plank of wood serving as the room's door and swung it back on its hinges. "Ben, listen to me!" She shouted, and he stopped with one foot out the door, but did not turn back. "I know you don't like me, and that's fine. If you want, I won't say another word to you for the rest of our days. But if you're ever going to listen to me just but one time, make it now. Please don't let your desire to be looked at as morethan who you are overtake your desire to save Lordran. If the two don't lie on the same path... travel the one that ends in salvation. Not ruin."

He hung still in the doorway only briefly before saying, "You're not as clever as you think you are, Abby. Keep your nose in your little books and out of my business," and slammed the door shut behind him as he stormed off.

When she was sure he'd gone, Abby went to the door, peeked out into the upper church hall beyond, and saw pale light starting to soak the stained glass near the stairs. Dawn was rising. She pulled breeches and a tunic on over her small clothes, slipped her feet into boots, and headed downstairs.

Domhnall was sorting through patched-up sets of armors, sitting cross- legged beside the stairs' end, and when Abby stepped before him, he lifted his eyes to her and his usual amicable smile spread across his face. "Aye siwmae, Abby!" He cheered. "Bright and early for you today, hm?

Good, good. You rise with the sun and it will share its energy within you till it falls. My old mum used to tell me that. Smart woman. Bad cook."

"Like me?" Abby asked, smiling.

"Oh, far worse than you, dear," Dom said. "The dog used to turn his nose up at her eggs." He laughed. "You... there's still hope for you. Maybe I'll give you another lesson later, hm?"

"I would like that very much. I only wish I had something I could share with you."

"Oh, the presence of a sweet and pretty girl is all the reward an old merchant like me requires."

The man always had a way of widening Abby's smile. "You're kind to say so, Domhnall."

He winked, chuckled, and went back to work.

While both Abby and Ben were afforded private rooms (at Quelana's insistence) upstairs, the rest of those who'd lived through the siege of the Archives were not as fortunate. They laid scattered about the main hall in groups, dark forms taking focus as dawn's first light cast the big stained windows looking in on them aglow. Tents of old drapery that had been salvaged from the Archives were the only privacy afforded to most, standing watch around the groups like towering, cloth, protectors. Abby walked down the length of the pews, looking in on-though, respectfully, not holding her gaze on any one group for too long-those that still slept.

When she arrived at the front of the church to look out at the morning fog rolling up from the Parish streets beyond, she pulled a deep breath of air that was too heavy and too moist in her mouth. The rains were drizzling down from the grey slab of sky above, setting the puddles grouped around the church's front into a dance. Abby hugged her arms to her body and watched it fall for awhile then, her thoughts lingering on her and Ben's conversation.

It was a familiar voice behind her that broke her focus. "Abby. What are you doing?"

She turned to see Quelana approaching; the witch's black robes flowing around her lower half so loosely, she almost appeared to be floating forward. "Oh, I... I was just lost in my own thoughts. That's all."

"You're up early," Quelana said as she fell in beside Abby and laid a hand upon her shoulder. "You're not having trouble sleeping again, are you?"

"Oh, no. I just..." She wasn't prepared to talk about Ben's little night visit or their conversation just yet, so she did the one thing she hated doing most. She lied. "I guess I just wanted to see the sun come up."

Quelana nodded, but the sharp look in her emerald eyes betrayed the gesture. Either way, she let the lie pass. "I'm taking food to Lautrec. Why don't you join me?"

Abby spotted the bowl of stew in her hands. It looked cold and not exactly fresh, but, she supposed, food was food. A smile rose upon her lips. "You're taking care of him."

"If you call brining the fool two meals a day and standing in the rain long enough for him to spew some drunken nonsense in my ears 'taking care of him', then... yes, I suppose I am."

"He's still drinking?"

"Oh, he only consumes about as much wine as he does oxygen," Quelana said, shaking her head. "In truth, it's the reason I'm even bothering. The man is... could be a good fighter and a good leader to these people. If I don't try to make him see that... you were right, Abby. He has no one else."

"It's good of you to do this, Quelana," Abby said. "But I can't go out there. It's still my fault he's become this... thing that he's become. My presence would likely only exacerbate the situation."

"Abby, trust me when I tell you: his situation can't get any worse," Quelana said. She laid the bowl of cold stew in one hand and reached for Abby's with her other. "Come on. Maybe seeing you will actually do him some good. Either way, it can't hurt."

Abby opened her mouth to voice protest, but Quelana had already started moving, and when she tugged gently at her arm, Abby found her feet carrying her along behind the fall of the witch's robes despite her reservations.

When they came upon the sleeping man atop the pile of blankets beneath an awning in the Parish, his face unshaven and dirty, his hair damp and unkempt, and empty wineskins stacked beside him nearly as high as Abby's books had been, Abby almost didn't recognize him as Lautrec at all. Then Quelana nudged his side with her foot and he stirred, lifted, and his hand reached towards a sheath that was not there, perhaps, for the shotels that never would be again. He shook his head, clearing sleep from his mind, likely, as she'd done herself earlier, and when his eyes-grey as the skies above-found her's, Abby was at once taken back to the first time she'd looked upon them in her cell at the Undead Asylum. After all she'd been through, the whole journey, the business with Logan and Chester at the Archives, and her near demise, she still felt like a child beneath the gaze of those cold and grey eyes.

Lautrec oriented himself, coughed into his hand, and rolled onto his side to vomit into a patch of grass. When it was done, Quelana knelt beside him, fixed him with a disappointed look, and dabbed at the corners of his

mouth with a kerchief. "Not easy to keep down your meals when all your meals are wine, is it?" She asked, shaking her head.

Lautrec, if he heard her at all, ignored that, found a wineskin not yet emptied and grabbed it to take a drink. It was nearly upon his lips when Quelana snatched it away from him, laying the bowl of stew in his grasping fingers in its place. Lautrec glared at her, but spoke no protest, and when his eyes moved to the bowl's contents, he grimaced, but tilted it back to drink anyway.

"Doesn't that damned blacksmith know how to make anything else but stew?" He grumbled when the bowl had been emptied.

Quelana took it from him. "I imagine it's hard to prepare more complex meals when your feeding fifty mouths. Or at least trying to."

Lautrec's reply was to steal his wineskin back and take a swig. When he finished, he looked upon Abby again and she felt herself wishing she had a place to retreat to in escape from those grey, harsh, circles of his eyes.

"What's she doing here?" Lautrec asked.  
"I asked her to come," Quelana said  
"Why?"  
"So that she can see you're not dead. At least... not entirely."

Lautrec caught Quelana's hand moving for his wineskin again. This time, his own hand reached out and grabbed her wrist. "If you try to take that from me again-"

"What?" Quelana interjected. "Will you attempt to stand up and chase after me between your fits of vomiting? Surely, you couldn't hit me with a bow if I get beyond ten steps, I've seen that evidence for myself. Let go of my wrist."

"Let go of my wine."

Quelana's eyes narrowed on his. "You know there are talks in the church about throwing you out of the Parish entirely. You are aware they won't put up with you forever if you're not going to help them, aren't you?"

Lautrec shrugged. "I've got all the company I need," he said, ripping the wine out of her hand and holding it out to his side so she could not take it again. A grin rose up his unshaven face. "And my mistress if far kinder than you are, witch," he turned to take a drink.

Quelana shook her head. "When they come to either kill you or toss you off another bridge, don't say you weren't warned."

"I'll be sure to aim my 'fits of vomit' in their direction when they do."

"You're a fool."

Lautrec laughed. "I already admitted that. The biggest one in Lordran. Remember?" He looked ready to continue speaking when his eyes flicked to Abby. He frowned. "What are you smiling about?"

Abby lifted a hand to her mouth. She hadn't even been aware she was smiling. "I... I'm sorry," she said. "It's just... as mad as it must sound, watching you two argue like this... it reminds me of how things were before. Before the Duke's Archives and the hollows and the nightmares and... Logan. Before all those terrible things came upon us, it was just the three of us and Ben. ...Patches too, I suppose." She felt her cheeks flush with chagrin. "It was... simpler then. That's all."

"Well," Lautrec began, "I'm happy the misery my life has become at your hands at least amuses you, girl. Perhaps you can come out here twice a day with the witch to watch our little 'show' for your enjoyment. The finale is going to be great. It ends with me, face down in a gutter, choked to death by my own vomit."

Abby's mouth fell agape. "I-I didn't mean-"

"To destroy me?" Lautrec finished for her. "To make me see the sister I once loved on the face of the woman I need to kill? To leave my soul in an ambivalent hell, so brutally tearing itself apart, my only solace is at the bottom of a skin of wine? That wasn't your intention?"

"Stop it," Quelana warned him.  
"You brought her out here," Lautrec growled. "I didn't ask for this today."

"I'm sorry, Lautrec, alright?" Abby pleaded. "I don't know any other ways to say it! I'm sorry!"

"Save your apologies for someone who gives a damn, girl."

"I said stop," Quelana commanded, grabbing him by the arm. "If it wasn't for Abby, and you had killed Anastacia, you would surely be dead yourself right now, either at the hands of Tarkus or Solaire or someone else. They would have ended you for killing her. Abby saved both your lives."

"You mean I would have died? Satisfied and content? And in combat?" Lautrec wrenched her hand from his arm. "What a 'terrible' fate that would have been." He stood, slowly, as if the very task was a burden to his every muscle. He winced as he leaned against the stone wall at his side, twisting his back till it cracked.

"...are you okay?" Abby asked timidly.

Lautrec drank a swig of wine. "Get thrown off enough bridges in your life and your back starts needing a bit more time to wake up than you do." He

went for another drink and came up empty. He sighed and his eyes moved to Abby. "You want to apologize, girl? You want to be 'friends'? Then make yourself useful and bring me more wine. Steal it if you have to, I don't give a damn."

Quelana rose beside him, shaking her head. "Come on, Abby. It isn't easy to tolerate him in much more than short bursts."

Quelana turned, but Lautrec caught her arm. "Witch," he said, his tone growing somber. "...tell Solaire or Andre or whoever it is that gives the orders in there that I saw something out here last night. Or... perhaps someone."

"You expect them to take a drunk's word on that?"

"Then tell them you saw it. It doesn't matter. There was something out here, though. I was drunk, sure, but I've been drunk just about damn near every night, and I never saw anything before."

"What did you see?" Abby asked, stepping nearer to them for the first time since she'd arrive.

"I was laying on the bridge there," Lautrec said, nodding towards the narrow walkway that crossed atop the middle of the street. "Half-drunk, half-asleep. I'll admit that. But then... I felt this cold, queer, wind sweep up from down near the Burg's entrance into the Parish. Woke me right up. Sobered me right up." As if his own words had been a reminder how much he detested sobriety, he went for another swig of wine, but stopped halfway upon, apparently, remembering he had no more. He muttered something and tossed the empty thing aside. "I kept still, though. I'm no fool. That's when the thing came through."

"What thing?" Quelana asked.

"I don't know. Looked enough like a man, but it was dark out here, the moon was clouded over, and there was no torch to light the way, so I can't say that for certain. He moved like a man, but... that cold wind..."

"Well, what did it do?"

Lautrec shrugged. "Walked right under me. Marched right up to the church steps there and looked inside. It was late enough that I imagine just about everyone of you were sleeping. For whatever reason, though, it stopped, as if... as if the thing's feet could not carry it any further.

"It stood there for a long time. What it was looking at, I haven't the faintest of ideas. If I'd had my shotels, and a head that wasn't swimming with booze, I might have challenged the thing to combat. I didn't, though. So I watched. After awhile, it just turned back and left. That's all. Right back the way it came. The strange thing is... the moment it disappeared around the bend of the road towards the Burg, that queer wind swept

right out of the air with it."

Abby hugged her arms tighter around her chest. Lautrec had told his story without a hint of the sarcasm or anger he'd been carrying, and even he seemed to grow a bit wary as he neared the tale's end. Quelana's face was more pallid than ever and she was breathing strangely. Abby moved to aid her, but Lautrec took her in his arm instead.

"What is it, witch?"

Quelana took hold of him. "What you saw was a Darkwraith." Her eyes, filled with a dread Abby had not seen in them since the night the dogs first came upon them at the Burg, flicked to Abby's. "Fallen knights that were swallowed by the abyss when they refused to abandon their loyalty to the four kings. My pupils have spoke of that queer, cold, wind accompanying them you spoke of. They are... the walking embodiment of a nightmare. If one travels Lordran once more..." She shivered before looking back to Lautrec. "You'd be a mad fool to stay out here alone. You're coming inside."

Lautrec shook his head. "I know what a Darkwraith is. They don't frighten me. And, no, I'm not coming inside. Ana's in there. I... my mind would..."

"I'll make sure you never cross paths with her myself," Quelana said. "I'll even get you your precious wine that you so desire."

Lautrec's brow lifted. A grin spread across his face. "Is that concern in your voice, witch?"

Quelana frowned. "Now is not the time for your games. You're a good fighter. To lose you to some sneak attack in the night would further endanger the lives of every man, woman, and child in that church."

"And you, of course," Lautrec added. "I'd be 'protecting' you too, would't I?"

"If you insist on making this about you and I, fine," Quelana hissed. "But you are coming inside with me." Abby saw her tighten the grip on his arm, as if to accentuate her command. "And I'm not asking." Quelana's look flittered back down the road towards the Burg, her breath coming labored again as she stared, and Abby saw her grip tighten on Lautrec again. Lautrec looked to the white-knuckled hand keeping hold of him and his expression was not one of anger... but something else.

She tried suppressing it before it came, but Abby could not stop a hint of jealousy come across her. That was a girl's love at the Archives, she reminded herself. And a mad girl's at that. Lautrec was never meant to be yours.

"Abby," Quelana's voice cut into her thoughts. "Go make sure Anastacia is not in the main hall. If she is, bring her out the side entrance for a talk."

"And where, exactly, do you plan on stashing me, witch?" Lautrec asked. "I have quite a few enemies in there if I remember correctly."

"Upstairs."  
"Upstairs? In your room?"  
Quelana's frown deepened. "I assure you, I won't be joining you."

"If I lose it," Lautrec told her. "And wind up painting those walls in Ana and anyone else who gets in my way's blood... you'll be partially responsible."

"Then perhaps you'd be better off locked up in your cell in the attic?"

Lautrec laughed. "Doesn't that defeat the purpose of those 'skills' of mine you so deeply require?"

Thunder grumbled overhead, pulling Abby's gaze skyward. "If it's alright with you two, I'd rather not stand out here in the rain arguing about this any longer. Especially if there really is one of those 'Darkwraith' things stalking the streets."

Lautrec and Quelana held each other's eyes for a moment longer than Abby felt was necessary before turning on her. "You're right," Quelana said. "I'm sorry, Abby. Would you go see to Ana?"

Abby nodded, happy, for once, to be out of the two of their presence.

When she crossed back into the church, movement in the shadowy nook beside the front doors caught in her periphery. Abby spun to see the pyromancy, Laurentius, leaned up against the wall there. She squinted and saw his eyes were reddened and tired looking and staring at his own boots. He must have been watching them talking from the church steps. When his eyes lifted to her own, Abby saw a familiar look housed within; one she knew quiet well.

It was the look of a broken heart.

Chapter 44

The skies above the Parish were just melting into twilight-though the soft, purple, pallet was now forever dampened by the darkness of the storm that clawed across it like a black hand reaching forth from the mountains in the East-when Tarkus' shouting filled the church hall.

Quelana had been helping Rickert and Rhea cut vegetables for Andre's next stew at the end of the longtable, so when the big man's shout of, "Rhea! Gods, where is that bloody woman! RHEA!" came bellowing down to them, the three exchanged a brief look of apprehension and rose at once.

Tarkus marched into the main hall from the church's side entrance, and by then he had already gathered a small crowed at his heels. His helm was missing, revealing a sweat-soaked brow under his shaggy fall of hair, and cheeks that were as red as flame. The black iron armor around his torso and limbs was nicked and dented, and when he twisted his way arduously around the hall's first pillar, Quelana saw he was not alone. Beside the big man, one arm draped across Tarkus' shoulder, the Knight Solaire hung limp and unconscious; his face bruised, his own armor just as tattered as Tarkus'.

"Rhea!" Tarkus shouted again, lugging Solaire down into a pew and nearly collapsing beside the knight himself.

"I'm here," Rhea said, hurrying up beside the two as the rest of the church began to fill in around them. A hushed chorus of concerned whispers flooded around the pew almost immediately. Rhea shouldered her way between two men and fell to a knee beside Solaire. "What's happened!?"

Tarkus, who'd laid his head back against a pillar and was pulling deep gasps of air to catch his breath, looked at her and narrowed his eyes. When, apparently, he had the wind to speak, he said, "Hell happened, that's what. Just tend to him, Rhea. He lives, but for how long, I do not know. Bastard creatures put a couple good ones on him."

Rhea pulled her talisman from within her maiden's robes immediately and pressed a gloved hand to Solaire's chest. Solaire's eyes were shut, and the man's breathing looked labored as his chest rose and fell in unnatural intervals. Rhea whispered some prayer and a warm, golden, glow reached from her talisman to cradle the wounded knight in its healing embrace.

"What creatures?" Quelana asked, raising her voice to be heard over the church's chattering. You already know the answer to that, though, don't you, she thought, and had to pull her robes tighter to her body to stave off a shiver.

"Darkwraiths," Tarkus growled the word with contempt.

"More than one?"

"Ha!" Tarkus barked mirthless laughter. "An understatement, that! The things were all over Anor Londo!"

All over, Quelana thought, and the image of a city full of those walking nightmares was too much for even her tightened robes to stop the shiver then.

"Where are the rest of the men you set out with?" Andre asked. The blacksmith had shoved his way to the front of the crowd and was looking up Rhea and Solaire with incredulity. "You can't be the only two-"

"They're dead."

"All of them!?" Andre snapped. "We sent six armed and armored men out there to travel beside you!"

"Aye, and now there are six armed and armored corpses behind us," Tarkus shouted back at the smith. "Did you not hear me? There was a city full of Darkwraiths awaiting us! The only reason I managed to escape with Solaire was because I was strong and fast and knew some of the old paths that lay forlorn and unused. I led the things down through the crack in the city's Great Wall and lost them in the Darkroot Garden. Gods... I hope I lost them."

Quelana's eyes (and a good number of those beside her's as well) lifted to the side entrance, where twilight was fading fast to night, and the rain was picking up beneath the belly of the storm overhead. The path leading North to Sen's Fortress was, thankfully, empty. For now, Quelana thought.

"Six good men gone," Andre said with a reproachful shake of his head. "And the Knight of Sunlight... how is it that hefell and you went on."

A strange look came upon Tarkus' face then that may have been fear but may have been something worse. He slowly shook his head. "I... I'm not sure. It was as if the things were targeting Solaire. They ignored others, myself included, and pressed in to cut him down time and time again as we fled through every bloody inch of that cursed city to escape them. Solaire... well, you know Solaire. He was insistent on holding ground so that the younger men with us could flee ahead and save themselves, but... I refused it. I made the men hold their ground right alongside the knight and myself. They lost their lives for it... but Solaire lives.

"They caught up with us when we were nearly at the old crack in the Great Wall, and if it hadn't been for Solaire's lightning... miracle, or spell, or whatever in Izalith it is, they would have swarmed and killed us too." He looked to the knight lying still atop the pew. "He fought well... but a man's body can only take so much punishment before his willpower alone isn't enough to keep it going."

Andre muttered a curse before turning his gaze on Quelana. "Might be your drunk knight's tale of a Darkwraith outside the church last night wasn't such a drunk tale after all," he said, scratching at the mane of his beard.

"Darkwraiths roaming Lordran," said Rickert. "That's just wonderful. I'll sleep like a baby tonight with that thought in my head."

"Sounds like the time for sittin' on our asses has passed," Patches spoke from the back of the crowd. "And the time for movin' 'em is upon us. I, for one, ain't lookin' for a Darkwraith's blade in my belly. It's time for you lot to get behind Ben and let him lead you down to the Kiln. ..'fore it's too bloody late."

Quelana looked to the head of the chapel, where Ben had his hands tangled in Pharis' as he whispered something in her ear that set the woman giggling; the two, seemingly, the only two not concerned with Solaire's condition.

"Kiln is sealed off," Tarkus said. "We scouted out that way the first day of our travels."

A wave of concerned chatter moved through the crowd:  
"Sealed off!?"  
"Well what in Izalith are we supposed to do now then!?"  
"I won't let my children be cut down by some Darkwraith monster!" "This is madness!"

"We left the Archives for this!?"

"The Archives are in ruins. What choice did we have?"

"Everything is in ruins!"

"What's the bloody point of having the Chosen Undead when we can't even bring 'em down to face Gwyn!?"

"All of ya shut yer damned traps!" Andre growled, throwing up his arms. The chatter waned away at once beneath the massive man's command. "It's clear we need a plan, aye, but standin' around flappin' all our gums at each other in a big circle ain't gonna do no good. Sieglinde!"

The woman squeezed between through the front line of the crowd to join in at the smith's side.

"Can you go set us up a meeting table upstairs," Andre asked, sweeping his eyes across the crowd. "Fer about... aye, seven or eight maybe?"

Sieglinde nodded and headed off at once.

"Witch, you're coming," Andre said, pointing Quelana out. "Tarkus. Rhea. Laurentius. Domhnall."

"Ben," Patches added. "And myself, of course."

"The boy is the Chosen, s'ppose he should be in on any plans made," Andre admitted. "You can piss off, though, Hyena."

Patches' look darkened, but the bald man held his tongue.

Andre ignored Patches' glare and looked back to Quelana. "Round up Abby, too. She's as much Chosen as the boy. She's got a right to be a part of this."

Quelana nodded. "Do you want me to get Lautrec as well?" "No," Andre, Rhea, and Tarkus all said at once.

Well, Quelana thought. At least there is one thing they're all in agreement about already.

"So you lot are going to go off and make all our decisions for us then?" A plump woman with two children at the hem of her skirt questioned, her brow furrowed indignantly.

"That's right," Andre answered. "Unless someone here has a better idea..." After a long pause, the crowd's silence was answer enough.  
"Well that settles it then," Andre continued. "Rhea, how is he?"

"I've done everything I can," Rhea said, dabbing a cut on Solaire's cheek with the sleeve of her robe. "He'll be alright. He needs sleep now, though. Likely quite a bit of it."

"Aye. Sieglinde and I will set him up a quiet place upstairs. Those who I named, I expect you up there soon. Those who I didn't-and that's a whole lot of you-stay inside and keep your eyes on the paths leading to Sen's and to the Burg. If there are Darkwraiths coming... we'll need every last one of us to hold this place against them. If you don't know, they're a nasty lot, and quite talented with a blade, so don't go tryin' ta fight 'em off on yer bloody own. Call for the rest of us."

After that, the crowd broke apart, though (based on their expressions and nervous whispers) their fears were far from dispersed. Quelana followed Tarkus and Andre upstairs as they carried Solaire between them. They headed off to set him at rest in a room and Quelana split apart to fetch Abby. She rattled her knuckles on the girl's door at the end of the upper hall. When no answer came, she slowly cracked it open.

Abby was leaned against the wall atop her blankets, her head rolled onto her shoulder, eyes closed, and an opened book splayed across her lap. The candle she must have been using to read beside her had all but burned to a nub.

"Abby," Quelana called softly to her.

The girl's eyes flickered open and she leaned forward, the book rolling to the blankets beneath her. Abby shook her head and stifled a yawn under her fist as her eyes worked into focus. "Quelana? What is it? I'm sorry, I must have dozed off reading again. Is everything okay?"

"There's a meeting. You should be there." "A meeting? Is there trouble?"

"Solaire and Tarkus have returned. Solaire's hurt, but he'll be alright. We can talk more at the meeting. Come when you're ready, alright?"

"I'm ready," Abby quickly answered. She climbed out of the blankets and slipped into her cloak and boots before falling in beside Quelana and hooking her arm under Quelana's own. As they walked down the hall, she whispered, "Are you sure Knight Solaire is going to be okay?"

"Rhea is a fine cleric and she said so herself," Quelana assured her.

"Can I go to him?"

"Perhaps after, Abby. This is... important."

Abby held her eyes a moment, nodded, and said no more during the short walk.

Sieglinde, if anything, was an efficient worker. By the time Quelana and Abby crossed beneath the arched doorway that led to a small, sectioned- off, portion of the upper hall, the woman had already assembled a round table in the room's center and a half-dozen chairs lined around it. Overturned barrels served as makeshift spare chairs beside them, and the table's contents-a haunch of bread, a skin of wine, and a few chalices-were aglow beneath a single candle. One side of the room was looked over by the ladder in a higher rise divided by a stone barrier, the other side split open to a balcony that overlooked both Sen's Fortress and the tops of the Darkroot trees below.

Night had come by the time the chairs and barrels were filled, and Quelana found her eyes holding on those dark trees, wondering what dark creatures might roam beneath them. The moon peeked in on them; a sliver of pale light in an otherwise cloudy sky. Rain smattered at the balcony: the sound, a constant reminder of a storm that knew no end.

Laurentius was the last of them to file into the 'meeting chamber', and he

was quick to drag a barrel up beside Quelana and cast his smile upon her as he sat. She forced a weak one in return, but pulled her eyes from his own almost immediately. Ben had been marching back and forth at the rear of the room, but Andre's growl of "Would you sit the hell down! You're makin' everyone nervous!" was enough for Ben to roll his eyes but seat himself anyway.

It was Rhea who spoke first from the chair she'd chosen across from Quelana. "Knight Solaire is a strong man with a stronger will. I bandaged his wounds and made him drink some honey wine. He's sleeping easy enough now."

"What happened to him?" Abby asked.

Tarkus relayed a quick telling of his tale of Darkwraith's in the city and of their escape at the cost of the other men's lives.

When it was told, Abby sat staring at the table, her brow drawn in pensive lines. After a moment, she said, "I wasn't aware Solaire was a cleric."

"He's no cleric," Tarkus said.

"No cleric? How could he have cast a light spear miracle? They tried teaching me that one once in Vinheim's Dragon School. I wasn't very good at it, but... I wasn't aware there was a sorcery version."

"Har!" Tarkus laughed. "Solaire's certainly no sorcerer either. His lightning spear... the thing comes right up from his bare hand. Don't ask me how he does it. It's been a gift of his since I've known the man. Sure as hell came in handy against those Darkwraith's, I know that much. They were damned set on ending him above all of us before they got a taste of the attack. Slowed 'em down long enough when he cast it for us to get away."

"His bare hand..." Abby muttered, rubbing at her own hands.

"Alright we know we've got Darkwraith's roaming about," Andre said. "But what about the hollows. The whole point of the damned mission was to scout out what the things were doing. Well... what in Izalith are they doing?"

Tarkus shook his head. "They're no threat. Not anymore. We killed a few rogue packs, but... the fight has all but fled from them. They are truly defeated."

Ben said nothing, but Quelana saw a smug grin rise up his face.

"Finally a bit of good news," Rhea said. "At least we can take solace in that. The hollows were, well, quite a terrible foe for awhile there."

"Aye," Andre agreed. "You lot didn't see the horde of those things marching up on that castle you were all holed up in. It was... unlike

anything I'd ever seen."

"No, we didn't see it," said Tarkus. "Only lived through it. Fought through it."

"And would have died in it, if it hadn't been for Benjamin," Sieglinde added, laying her hand atop Ben's and smiling appreciatively. "I only wish... my father would have been counted among the rest of you as a survivor."

"Kirk killed Siegmeyer long before the siege of the Archives," Laurentius said. "I was there the night he so callously murdered the man. You have my sincerest apology, my lady, that I was not able to stop him."

"Why weren't you able to stop him, Laurentius?" Sieglinde asked.

"O-Oh," the pyromancer stammered, shifting a bit atop his barrel. "Well, I... I couldn't, you see. I was acting a bit undercover at the time." He turned to Rhea. "For our Order."

"Yes, our Order," Rhea echoed. "The one that I feel should be discussed immediately."

"Gods, I hope this isn't more 'Dragon' talk," Andre muttered. "I haven't had enough wine in my belly to stomach that yet."

"We had a plan!" Rhea insisted. "Tarkus, you were part of it! You agreed to it! It was Nico's plan, and... it was a good one." The priestess looked skyward and smiled wistfully; perhaps a moment of reverie for her fallen friend. "You don't have to worship the ancient, eternal, dragon that resides in Lordran's Great Hollow to admit he may be able to help us. I mean, Andre, He is the only one that has been around for as long as, perhaps, Lordran itself! We should make the pilgrimage Nico had planned! It can't hurt, well, not really."

"Unless a group of Darkwraith's cut us down in our travels," Sieglinde said.

"Well we can't just stay holed up in here forever!" Rhea retorted. "We run that risk anywhere we go now!"

"Lautrec said the Darkwraith he saw halted at the front of the church for awhile and simply turned back," Abby said. "I wonder why...?"

"No one's certain that drunk even saw anything yet," Laurentius was quick to add. "I wouldn't take a man like that's word on anything."

"I would," Quelana said. "He saw it. I'm near certain of it. He even called the creature out before Tarkus returned with tales of his own Darkwraiths. That's no coincidence."

Laurentius lips pressed tightly together beneath his hood, but he only

took a deep breath and settled back onto his barrel.

"Church's as old as this one are said to have been protected with ancient miracles," Rhea said. "Perhaps whatever magics the first clerics of Lordran set upon these ground are keeping the things at bay. That would be a, well, rather fortuitous turn of events for us. For once."

Tarkus reached for the wineskin and poured himself a glass. "I can kill the things," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "But not in big groups. If we can funnel them down... get me in front of any one of the bastards one- on-one and I'll bring you all its head. I'll promise that."

"We don't know how many there are," Andre said.

"One head comes off just as easy as one hundred," Tarkus told him. "Provided, again, that we don't get swarmed. The things are brutal in combat. Most here would die to just one."

"But not you?" Ben asked beside the big man. "Didn't you hear me, boy? I can beat them." "And so can I," Ben retorted.

"Har! The boy kills one little God, Gwyndolin, and thinks he can best a Darkwraith! That's amusing, kid, but don't let your hubris go and get you killed. You haven't faced one. Pray that statement holds true."

Ben's face flushed with chagrin, and Quelana saw his gloved hand curl into a fist atop the table. "I'm the Chosen."

"Aye," Tarkus agreed. "You can light bonfires with the best of them, then. Leave the fighting to the men who've fought." He swigged from his chalice. "And, if I remember correctly, she's 'Chosen' as well," he said, nodding to Abby.

The table's attention turned Abby's way and she tugged at her jerkin a bit under the pressure. She opened her mouth to speak-

-and Ben cut her off. "Abby and I have talked about that very subject. We're in agreement. I'll light the Kiln. She'll stay out of the way and do what she can to help those not strong enough to fight here at the church. If they're staying here, that is."

Quelana turned towards Abby and narrowed her eyes upon the girl. "Is that true, Abby?"

"I..." She took a breath and fiddled with her jerkin. "I suppose. I mean... Ben is, obviously, more trained for combat than I. If it had to be one of us to go battling our way into the Kiln... it should be him."

He got to her, Quelana thought. He must have cornered her and bullied

her into it. She found herself regretting not keeping a closer eye on the girl and was opening her mouth to say just that when Abby continued.

"But... I'm not certain one of us should be the one to light the flame anymore."

"Abby..." Ben said quietly.

"I'm not keeping my mouth shut about this," Abby said. "I'm sorry, but I won't. I think it's too important."

"Not one of you?" Andre said. "What nonsense are you talking about, girl? You're the Chosen. This whole bloody thing revolves around one of you facing off against old Gwyn."

Ben leaned forward and nodded across the table at Abby. "Perhaps whatever madness you all said took her mind at the Archives still lingers. I agree. It's nonsense. It's those foolish books she's always reading. They've polluted her mind."

Abby frowned. "That's not true. And you weren't at the Archives, Ben. You don't know what you're talking about."

"No, I was too busy saving all your lives." "So you claim."

"And what do you claim?" Ben snapped. "What mad idea has popped into your little, childish, head now? You want the Kiln to light itself, perhaps?"

If Ben was trying to rouse her anger and make her look foolish, it appeared to be working. Abby, though, instead of speaking, rose from her chair, and marched out of the room. Quelana called to her, but the if Abby had heard, she made no attempt to halt. When Quelana turned back to Ben, that smug grin had risen up his face again.

"A girl's ramblings," he said with a shrug. "Now... let us return to more important matters. Namely, how we're going to open up the Kiln again so I can-" His eyes drifted back to the doorway.

Abby had returned. In her hands was a book, opened to a page near its center, and when she reached the table, she threw it down for all to see. Quelana and everyone besides Ben leaned forward to glimpse the page. On it, some artists rendition of the Divine Lord, Gwyn, was drawn; the massive man battling dragons with two fistfuls of lightning. An profound fury burned in Quelana's chest upon merely glimpsing the thing. Quelana had been far too young to remember, but the tales told that it was Gwyn who'd convinced her mother to attempt to recreate the first flame, and Gwyn who had left her when the attempt failed, and the flame turned to the chaos that ruined her mother, her sisters, and her home.

"Congratulations," Ben said dryly. "You figured out what the old man looks like."

Abby kept her calm. "I've read over a dozen books since I first arrived at the Archives. Every one of them, of course, mentions the Lord of Cinder, Gwyn. There are thousands and thousands of words written on the God and his great battle against the dragons. Thousands more written about his children. Gwyndolin, who you claim to have killed, and Gwynevere, a daughter that mysteriously vanished years and years ago and who most of the scholars think dead, replaced by the illusion that resides in Anor Londo's Great Chapel."

Ben clapped his hands together. "An entertaining history lesson. Quelana, can you put the child to bed now?"

"Go on, Abby," Quelana said, ignoring him. Her interest had been captured, and, judging by the pensive looks on the faces of the rest of the table, she wasn't the only one.

"Well... some of the passages written on Gwyn, if you read carefully-I had to double back a few times myself-the subtext hints towards... well, another child."

"A third offspring of Gwyn?" Tarkus asked. "...ridiculous," Ben muttered.

"Yes," Abby said, pointing out a paragraph on the page she'd opened to. "And not just another child, but Gwyn's own firstborn."

Andre, who'd cocked his head on its side to read from the page, scratched at his beard. "Huh. Aye... I see it. Talking about 'the one who came before'. Is that what you mean, Abby?"

"Look here," Domhnall, who'd been unusually silent since the start of the meeting, said. "'Gwyn's three, bathed in the Lord's light. Two who would rule, and one that never would'. If that's not a confirmation of Abby's discovery, I don't know what is. Aye siwmae, Abby! A good find!"

"Anything can be ascertained from vague words if you desire it badly enough," Rhea said. "But... I must admit... it does seem likely. I, well, I remember hearing chatter in the holy schools of Thorolund about the 'lost child' of Gwyn." She shrugged. "I suppose it could be true..."

"For argument's sake," Tarkus began, "let's say you're right, Abby, and Gwyn had a third child. A firstborn, as you say. ...so what? How can that change anything? That certainly won't stop the Darkwraith's and it can't open the way to the Kiln for us."

"No," Abby admitted. "But if we can accomplish those things ourselves... I believe the way to save Lordran-to truly save it-is to bring the

firstbornbefore his father... and when Gwyn is no more... his child, his blood, his successor... he lights the flame and brings about a new era of light to the world!"

Ben stood. "You just shut your mouth already, Abby! No one is believe this crap!"

"Sit down, boy," Tarkus said. "This might be the first interesting thing I've heard at this damned meeting." He turned back to Abby. "The Chosen... are not chosen? Is that what you're saying, girl?"

Abby's eyes had widened with the excitement of revealing this idea of hers that she, obviously, must have been harboring for quite some time. Quelana found herself smiling for the girl. It was about time people paid attention to her. "Yes," Abby said, nodding. "In a way, I guess I am saying that."

"Gwyn's child replaces him..." Sieglinde said, a slow nod coming to her as well. "It seems so simple."

"Simplest plans are often the best ones, too," Domhnall said, a wide grin spread across his face. "I think the girl has the right of it! Aye siwmae! She could bloody have the right of it!"

"No..." Ben muttered, shaking his head. A crestfallen look had befell the young man.

Quelana reached over and squeezed Abby's hand, and when the girl looked upon her, Quelana nodded her head to let her know she was proud of her.

"Wait," Andre said. "You said 'he' before in referral to Gwyn's firstborn. What makes you think its a boy and not a girl, Abby?"

"I don't just think his firstborn was a boy," Abby went on, swallowing and taking a deep breath. "I think... I think his firstborn is Solaire."

A hush befell the table. Every last one of them, Ben included, stared up at Abby, their brows drawn in thoughtful lines, a few of their mouths hanging slightly agape. Quelana herself had been buzzing with the excitement of some answer for the failing world around them, but now... now her mind felt as if it had been wiped clean. She could only stare at Abby, letting the girl's words soak in.

Abby faced each of them in turn. "I know it sounds a bit farfetched considering Solaire looks and speaks like a man and not the offspring of a God, but... pooling all the things I've learned from my readings, and all I've experienced... and even what I've learned here from you tonight, Tarkus... I'm nearly certain I'm right about this."

"Solaire..." Tarkus muttered, scratching at his chin. "...son of Gwyn?"

"You said yourself he can summon a bolt of lightning from his bare hand!" Abby went on. "How could that be possible of a mere mortal man? Quelana can do it with flames, but she is the child of the Great Witch of Izalith."

The table looked around at each other, but if someone had a thought on the matter, they were not voicing it.

"I've also had a feeling about the knight since I've met him," Abby continued. "I've felt he was... important somehow. My hunches have been right before."

"I'll back the girl on that," a voice spoke from the doorway.

Quelana turned and found Lautrec standing before them, wineskin in hand, his eyes at half-mast. Oh, Gods, he's drunk, Quelana thought.

Lautrec's eyes found hers, and as if reading her mind, he said, "I'm not as drunk as you think, witch. Calm yourself."

"He shouldn't be permitted in here!" Laurentius practically shouted beside her. "He's a drunk and he's done nothing but waste our wine and now our time! Cast him out, Andre! We don't need-"

"Aye, he's a drunk," Tarkus interjected. "But the man can fight. If it hadn't been for him and Solaire holding the line at the Archives, in fact, we all might've gone down. Let the knight have his say."

Laurentius' face went as red as his pyromancy glove.

Lautrec swigged from his wineskin and walked into the room, his steps falling in that uneven way that a man whose been at the booze tended to fall. "As I was saying," he continued, sending a wink at Laurentius that further colored the pyromancer's cheeks. "If there's one thing I can tell you about being in Abby's company since, practically, the damned beginning of this mess... it's that if the girl has a hunch, you'd better listen to it."

Quelana turned to see a prideful smile rise up Abby's face as she looked upon the knight.

"Were you spying on us!?" Ben snapped. "No one invited you, Lautrec."

"Spying?" Lautrec repeated, laughed, swigged at his wine. "No. I was sleeping. Or, at least, trying to. You lot decided to set up camp not ten feet from the sad mound of blankets you've given me as a bed. I was dreaming, too. It was a good dream. I like dreaming. It's like drinking, but without the funny looks from the rest of you or the hangover the next day."

"If you've got a point to make, make it and be gone," Laurentius snapped.

Lautrec went for a swig of wine, realized his skin was empty, and grabbed for the pyromancer's chalice instead. Laurentius made to stop him, but Lautrec had already lifted and emptied it into his mouth before the man could snatch it away. "Hey!" Lautrec said. "That's far better than the swill I've been drinking." He narrowed his eyes (the best they could) on Andre. "You've been holding out the good stuff on me, smith?"

"I'm not going to hand over the good wine to a drunk," Andre said. "Fair enough," Lautrec said, reaching for Rhea's chalice next.  
Rhea snatched it away and fixed him with a reproachful look.

"What do you want!?" Ben shouted. "It's bad enough Abby is spewing this nonsense about Gods and firstborns! Now we're expected to listen to a drunk's inane ramblings!?"

Lautrec leaned against the balcony (though Quelana was not sure he was doing it so much for comfort as necessity) and swiped at his brow. "Look, I'm just here to say I support Abby. She's been right about most things she's said, as much as I hate to admit it. And this is coming from someone whose life she has literally left in shambles." He peeked over the balcony. "See that just now? I just had the urge to throw myself off this balcony. I get these little impulses a few times a day now. They're... not fun. So, believe me, when I am saying the girl is right, you should be paying attention."

"Thank you, Lautec," Abby said.

"Are we taking the word of a drunk and a naive girl whose been known to have slipped into madness before?" Ben questioned.

"The Darkwraiths..." Tarkus said, pulling the table's attention his way. "They were after him. Solaire, that is. I'll swear it before anything you want me to swear it before. They wanted Solaire dead. More than me, more than anyone. It was as if... murdering him was their very purpose."

Domhnall nodded. "And if whoever or whatever is giving the things their orders knew that Solaire could be the one to truly bringing about the salvation of Lordran..."

"They'd make it their goal to destroy him," Tarkus finished for the merchant.

"The knight told me," Quelana began, "That he felt 'destined' to sacrifice his life for the greater good at the Archives. What greater good could there be than to give his life to the flames at the Kiln... and bring about a time of peace and prosperity to Lordran."

"Wait a moment," Laurentius spoke up. "Are we supposed to believe that the Knight Solaire just... forgot that he is the son of a God!?"

"Maybe he doesn't know," Rhea suggested.

"Aye," Domhnall agreed. "Maybe he's been kept in the dark, so to speak, on the matter because this 'cycle' is meant to spin on and on... trapping us forever."

"This 'cycle' idea was Logan's mad ramblings," Andre growled.

"And mine," Lautrec added, raising an arm.

"Listen, it can't hurt," Abby said. "If we're going to fight our way to the Kiln anyway, what harm could Solaire lighting the bonfire instead of Ben or I possibly do?"

"She has a point," Sieglinde admitted.

"I'm certain Solaire would have no problem with this," Tarkus added.

"There is a potential risk, though," Andre said. "They say the flames of the kiln, when lit anew... they say any mortal man caught even in their vicinity would perish. The light it births causes either a mortal man's heart to explode or his mind to shatter. It's too much. It's why only the Chosen was ever supposed to light it."

"Solaire would take that risk in a heartbeat if it meant a chance to save Lordran," Quelana said.

"Aye," Tarkus agreed.

Ben's arms were folded defiantly across his chest. He shook his head. "I think this is madness. I saved you all. Me. Not Solaire. Not him." He nodded at Lautrec. "It was me. And now... now you're telling me my rightful position as Lordran's savior means nothing because some foolish girl and her drunken friend have a hunch!?"

"To be fair," Lautrec said, raising a finger to the sky, "It was her hunch. I'm only supporting it." His brow furrowed. "Domhnall... you're not drinking that, are you?"

Domhnall chuckled, shook his head, and passed his chalice to the knight's eager hand.

"Would you all stop feeding this man booze!" Laurentius shouted.

"Also," Lautrec went on. "I'm not sure if this is up for discussion at this particular meeting, but I think the pyromancer here is a bit of an ass. Thoughts?"

Tarkus snorted laughter. Laurentius' fist trembled atop the table. Lautrec drank more wine.

"Perhaps we wait to discuss this matter further until Solaire himself can

add his input," Sieglinde suggested.

"Aye," Andre agreed. "Let us discuss more pressing matters, then. Namely, how, exactly, we're going to get to Gwyn."

"If the way is sealed, that means the Lordvessel need be collected once again," Domhnall said. "Provided it has returned to Anor Londo."

"Or it's been stolen," Tarkus said. "No one has seen the damned thing since the last Chosen failed us."

"Either way, we need it," Rhea said. "Right now, it should be top priority. None of this matters without the Lordvessel to open the way to Gwyn."

"Wasn't there a dragon-woman with you all?" Lautrec asked. "Big fluffy tail? Fangs? A seething hatred for humanity?"

Andre ignored him. "Provided we find the Lordvessel, that means we'll need to fill it as well. If the Bequeathed Lord Soul shards have been scattered once again.."

"Then we go and un-scatter them," Tarkus said. "Whatever creatures have crawled back up out of the depths of Izalith to guard them... they will perish beneath my greatsword."

"Even with the Darkwraiths roaming Lordran?" Sieglinde questioned.

"If the Darkwraiths are truly hunting Solaire," Quelana piped up. "That means the man can be used as a distraction."

"Send him in the opposite direction we happen to be heading," Rhea said. "That's not a half-bad idea!"

"Bait!?" Tarkus snapped. "You want to use my friend as bait!?" "If it helps us save Lordran?" Domhnall asked. "Absolutely." "Did I miss dinner?" Lautrec asked.

"But if Abby is right, Solaire is more important than any of us," Tarkus went on. "We can't send the man out with a small army of Darkwraith on his heels."

"Then we find a way to deal with the Darkwraith," said Sieglinde. "That... will not be an easy task," Andre told her.

"I want to make it clear," Lautrec began, "if I'm not awake when dinner is being served out, by all means, wake me up."

"Alright," Tarkus said. "I'll lead a team into Anor Londo, Darkwraith be damned, and retrieve the Lordvessel, provided it is there. When I return

with it... well, we can figure out what we're doing from there." "I'm going with you," Ben said at once.  
Tarkus nodded. "Aye. I'll need every able-bodied man I can get." "I'll go," Andre said.

Rhea turned to Quelana. "Lady Quelana, your power is a force to be reckoned with. Will you accompany Tarkus as well?"

Quelana was opening her mouth to tell the priestess she would when Lautrec answered for her, "No."

All eyes, Quelana's most intently of all, turned his way. Lautrec shook his head. "The witch and I have other business to attend to."

Quelana lifted her brow. "Oh? And when were you planning on telling me of this business?"

"You're returning to your home," Lautrec said. "To Izalith. If memory serves me correctly, the Bed of Chaos resides there. The keeper of one of these precious 'souls shards' we so desperately need fetch. That makes your journey duly important, doesn't it?"

So you were awake, Quelana thought, narrowing her eyes on the knight. Beside her, Abby was staring. "Is that true, Quelana?" The girl asked. "You're... leaving?"

"I... yes," Quelana answered, seeing no easy way to break the news to the table. "I was planning on it. I would like to settle things with my sisters before... this all comes to an end."

A look of hurt flashed across Abby's face for only a moment before the girl smiled and nodded. "I understand then."

"You're going to settle things and to collect the soul shard," Lautrec continued. "And I am going with you."

Quelana turned to him.

"That's right, witch," Lautrec said, grinning. "Once upon a time, a brave and mighty knight promised a beautiful and dangerous witch that, if she aided him, he would return with her to her place of origin. Well... the knight intends to keep his promise... lest his broken mind fail him and he toss himself from a bridge."

A part of Quelana wanted to reprimand the man and his drunken ramblings and cast him away... but another part, far larger and more profound than the first, had a great sense of relief wash across it. She didn't want to make the journey to Izalith and face her sisters alone, in truth, she'd just figured she would have to. Lautrec's grey eyes held on

her own as the man nodded, and, perhaps for the first time, she found herself thankful that he was around... that she wouldn't have to be alone.

"Solaire!" A woman's voice shrieked the hall, pulling every last one of their eyes towards the doorway.

From the shadowed hall, a short woman with greying, black, hair marched in, hands on her hips, and darted her wide, infuriated, eyes between the lot of them. "Where is the Knight Solaire!?"

"He's sleeping," Andre said. "What's the meaning of this, woman?"

The woman's eyes found Ben and narrowed with such contempt, Quelana thought she might actually pounce across the table. "Either lock that heartless beast away or kill him there where he stand!"

Ben frowned. "What?"

"He's dead!" The woman wailed, and tears soaked the corners of her eyes almost instantly. "My son! Thomas! He's DEAD!"

Rhea and Sieglinde rose from the chairs at once and went to the woman. "I'm so sorry, dear," Rhea cooed, stroking the woman's arm.

"He killed him! He killed my boy!" The woman shrieked, burying her face against Rhea's shoulder and sobbing.

Ben shook his head. "What is this? I didn't kill anyone. That woman is mad."

"His hand was marked!" The woman sobbed. "His hand was marked just like you threatened and he was DEAD! YOU KILLED MY BOY!" She lunged for Ben, but Rhea and Sieglinde took hold of her.

"His hand was marked?" Andre echoed before spinning on Ben. "Did you mark that child, boy?"

Ben put his hands up. "Okay, yes, I did, but I did not kill anyone! I swear it! This is... this is a lie!"

"YOU KILLED MY SON!" The woman shrieked again, wrestling against Rhea and Sieglinde's grip.

"You marked that child after we told you you couldn't?" Quelana asked. "He needed to learn a lesson!" Ben protested.

"You killed him... he killed him..." The woman was so stricken with grief, she nearly collapsed against Sieglinde's chest.

"I didn't," Ben said. "I swear it."

"Tarkus," Andre said. "Lock Ben in the attic cell." "What!?" Ben snapped.

Tarkus grabbed the young man's arm. Andre ripped the dagger from his sheath and took hold of his other arm.

"No," Ben protested. "No! This is ridiculous! I didn't kill anyone! You think I would murder a child!?" He shouted, but Tarkus and Andre were already hauling him towards the doorway. "You did this!" Ben desperately shouted at Lautrec as he passed him. "You framed me you bastard knight! You did this to me! You coward!"

Lautrec frowned, sipped at the chalice Domhnall had given him, but voiced no protest.

"You bastards!" Ben wailed as he was hauled off to be locked in a cell. "You're making a mistake! DO YOU HEAR ME! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! I'M THE CHOSEN!

"I'M YOUR CHOOSEN!"

His screams trailed all the way down the hallway. They did not stop for some time.

Chapter 45

You put enough wine in your belly, and sooner or later: your belly runs out of room, Lautrec thought, recalling old words of warning from one forgotten friend in Carim or another. Was that Devon? Rose, perhaps? He couldn't recall and, supposed, it didn't matter. His stomach lurched and he doubled over the balcony again to send a fresh fall of wine-colored vomit down alongside the rain. It splattered the wooden top of the awning that had been built below, and as Lautrec stared down at it, a mad thought crept into his head. That's wasted wine.

He laughed-though the sound of it was neither joyous nor humorous in his ears-and pushed himself away from the railing, hoping he had spewed his last; for the night, at least.

The table where he and the rest of them had met at earlier in the night stood empty and dark beneath the extinguished candle resting at its center. Tarkus and Domhnall had taken his offer up on finishing the wine after everyone else had departed. Lautrec decided he liked the two of them as they sat there, getting drunk, telling old battle stories, telling old bedroom stories. Lautrec though, as usual, had out-paced the other two men in the cups, slumped back in his chair at a point, and the next time he'd opened his eyes, he was alone, the night had settled deeper into the skies outside, and his stomach had decided it was full.

He crossed to the chair Tarkus had been sitting at, peeked into the man's chalice, and found a bit of wine left to chase off his ill feeling. Best cure for a boozy stomach is to convince your body you aren't through drinking. Whose words had those been? Some old knight of Carim, most likely; a few words that suck with him from his boyhood, as most things he'd heard the knights say did. They certainly weren't his father's words. A drink in that man's hand would have looked as foreign as a shield in Lautrec's own.

He downed the wine and, after a moment's consideration, finished off what was left in the skin lying beside it as well. It wasn't much, but it was enough to awaken that pleasant heat in his stomach and throat, and when he closed his eyes, the floor took on a familiar sway underfoot.

He staggered into the hall outside, where the moonlight could not as easily reach into without the balcony's aid. Lautrec squinted into the darkness. At the very end of the hall, he could see torchlight bathing a small circle outside a doorway. Not just a doorway, he thought. The doorway to the attic. And the cell. Your old cell. As he pictured it, another remembrance from the night's meeting lolled into his head. They put Ben in there. He killed a child.

With nothing else to do at that moment, and sleep, likely, a damned near impossibility after his booze-nap, Lautrec headed off to see the boy.

The twist of stairs was more difficult than he remembered, and once, after taking the turn at the midway point that led up to the cell, his heel slipped on an edge, and Lautrec nearly tumbled down and broke his neck. And what a comical end that would be for the drunken knight, he thought. Would you cry for brother dearest, Ana?

The barred door filled with a dark figure upon the noise of Lautrec's stumble. He lifted his gaze to see Ben, his gloved hands gripped tightly around the bars, staring out at him. His face twisted into what might have been contempt and he shook his head. "No. Not you. Anyone but you."

"There's no one else but me," Lautrec told him. "Sad, sure, but true. I am your only visitor."

"I'll kill you for doing this to me, Lautrec," Ben said. His voice was quiet and controlled, but his fingers moved against the bars uncertainly and he kept shifting from foot to foot. "I'll kill you for everything you've done to me, in fact."

"Hate to spoil your little 'vengeance' fantasy, boy, especially because I know how delightful vengeance can feel when its cooking your blood and numbing your mind, but I did not do this to you. People say a lot of rather unkind things about me. Most all of them are true. But, alas, I am no child murderer."

"And neither am I!" Ben shouted. "Get me out of here and I'll... I'll forget you abandoned me at the Burg and at Sen's! I'll set my hatred for you aside! Just-" He jerked at the bars, as if his rage alone could pull them loose. "Get me out! I'm the Chosen Undead! This is ridiculous to be treated in such a way!"

"You think they'd trust me with a key?" Lautrec asked. "I get the leftover, cold, stew when everyone else has had their fill. Believe me, I'm the furthest thing from 'in charge' around here, boy."

"Don't call me 'boy'," Ben growled. "I won't stand here and listen to that. Not anymore. I am your Chosen Undead and I demand your respect."

Lautrec laughed. "If you think respect is something that can be 'demanded', you neither understand it nor deserve it."

Ben's arms shook behind the bars as his fists squeezed tighter around them. His jaw moved as if he were grinding his teeth down to nubs. "I'm going to kill you, Lautrec," he said, nodding. "Before this all comes to an end... I'm going to kill you."

Lautrec shrugged. "Hard thing to do when I'm on this side of the bars and your on that side, no?"

Ben glared at him for a moment. A grin rose up his face. "Before I kill you, though, I'm going to kill your sister. And I'm going to do it in front of you.

I promise you that."

"You sound like a child. Stomping your feet and making empty threats. You want to rouse my anger, boy? You'v got a lifetime of learning ahead of you before you're clever enough to do so."

Ben's grin faded at once.

Lautrec pointed his way. "Regardless of what you might think, it actually wasn't my intention to come up here and rile you all up. I, too, was locked in that cell, once. Longer than you can imagine. I know what it's like to be in there." He thought of dark nights and whispers-which, later, he learned were the mad sorcerer Logan's-and suffocating feelings of helplessness and hopelessness and dread that spun around his mind for what felt like an eternity of suffering. The thoughts were stealing away all the work the winehad done for him, though, and he cast them aside. "Those walls will close around you if you let them. My advice-"

"I don't care what your advice is!?" Ben shouted.

Lautrec nodded. "And I know anger, too. Anger and I... we're old friends. If there's one thing that can destroy and control even the best of men... it's anger. Get it under control, boy, or the world will start to look like the inside of that cage, and, trust me, when that happens... madness isn't far behind." He studied the lines of the boy's face. "Your father was a hard man, wasn't he?"

Ben said nothing.

Lautrec nodded. The kid's expression was confirmation enough. "My father was a hard man, too. Makes us pricks sometime, doesn't it?"

"You don't know me. And you're not smarter than me," Ben said. "I don't have to listen to you."

"Smarter? Maybe not. I'm a knight. I kill pretty well, but my skills start falling off quite quickly after that. I am wiser, though, and if you intend for this little 'story' of yours you've built up to end in triumph and not tragedy... you'd listen to me."

Ben's lips quivered, as if the things were ready to leap from his face, but he only fumed in silence.

Lautrec nodded. "I don't know what they're going to do with you. You'd be best served keeping your mouth shut and your head down and hope they take pity." He turned and prepared for the dangerous walk down the stairs (a handful of stairs could be a boozers worst enemy) when Ben's voice halted him.

"Lautrec..."

He turned.

Ben peeled the glove from his hand and stuck his arm between the bars, extending it out between them. "We're never going to be friends. And one day, sooner or later, you and I are going to settle things between us. Let us shake. And let the best man win when that day comes."

Lautrec's eyes moved from the boy's bare hand to his dark eyes. There was a queer eagerness housed within that look. "I only shake the hand of men I respect," he told him. "And you've got a long way to go... boy."

He left with the sound of Ben's furious shouts trailing along behind him.

Downstairs (and the climb there went maddeningly slow as Lautrec laid careful boot after careful boot upon the steps) the church was a serene and silent painting of night. Shadowed lumps lined the walls between makeshift tents of drapery, only the pale moon's glow upon the stained glass illuminating them, and Lautrec found himself wondering which, exactly, of those lumps might be Anastacia, and how many he would have to drive a sword into before he found the right one.

An image flashed across his vision, as clear as if painted by the Gods above, of the ponds outside Carim, sparkling beneath the day's mighty sun, where a little blond boy and a little blond girl sat giggling and skipping stones and not housing a single concern in their little blond heads because they were young and they were free and that was all there was then.

The image fled as quickly as it had arrived, and Lautrec found himself leaned against a pew, his arms trembling as furiously as Ben's had in the attic. He pulled a deep breath, steadying himself, and lurched to the chapel's alter. He dug through Andre's cooking supplies and utensils, nearly overturning ever damned last one of them until he found what he so desperately required. A skin of wine.

The bitter stuff was medicine in his mouth and in his mind, and after a long, long, drink, the trembling stopped, and the sway replaced it. He'd come to love that sway. As much, perhaps, as he'd once loved that little blond girl. He rubbed his fingers against his eyes and stumbled out of the chapel, wineskin in hand. He refused his eyes to fall upon those nameless lumps littering the church floor, lest a hand of madness reach into his head again. Instead, he simply staggered towards the church's front entrance with the intention of putting fresh air in his lungs and cold rain in his face.

The pyromancer, Laurentius, was leaned in the entrance when he came upon it, though, and he halted, watching the man. Laurentius himself appeared to be watching something too. Lautrec squinted into the rainy night scene beyond the arched passage and found a dark figure standing at the bottom of the steps. The witch, he thought. Of course it's the witch.

What else does that man ever watch? He moved up behind the pyro and rattled his skin of wine to sound an alert.

Laurentius spun on him, gasping, and when the man's eyes found his own, they narrowed with a contemptuous glare not entirely dissimilar from the one Ben had set upon him in the attic. It's a good thing I'm leaving this place, Lautrec thought. Half of the men in it seem to want my head.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Lautrec had a drink.

"Will you allow me to speak with you on a... rather serious subject, knight," the pyro broke the silence.

"You're doing well enough so far," Lautrec said. "Go on." "I am in love with Quelana."  
"Shocking," Lautrec said dryly.

"No, you don't understand. I... I love her. More deeply and more truly than any man, perhaps, has ever loved anything." He stepped forward, so that his bearded face came aglow with moonlight. The man's eyes were red beneath his hood, whether from crying or lack of sleep or something else, though, Lautrec did not know. "Please don't take her from me."

"Take her?" Lautrec questioned.

"You may desire what's between her legs, knight, but I desire her heart. And I will give her a life of love and servitude unlike any you could ever hope to aspire to."

Lautrec frowned. "Don't assume to know what I desire, pyromancer."

"You know its true. You lust. I love. Please don't attempt to complicate things for me! I beg of you!"

Lautrec shook his head and pulled another swig off his wineskin. "Have you ever considered, my friend, that the witch might not love you in return, and that I have nothing to do with that?"

"She'll learn to," Laurentius said; he carried the tone and pace of a man desperate for approval.

"Learn to?" Lautrec laughed. "If you think the witch can be 'tamed' you've got a lot to learn yourself, pyro."

Laurentius' face twisted up. "It's not fair that you should get her when I've done nothing but worship the ground she walks upon! It's just not fair!"

"Few things in life are. You'll get over it." When the pyromancer's eyes widened, and the man took on the look of one who might burst into tears at any moment, Lautrec sighed and said, "Look, the witch is going to

Izalith. As it stand, for now, I'm going with her. If you wish to accompany her instead, ask her. If she chooses you instead of me I will, respectfully, bow out. Is that good enough for you?"

Laurentius shook his head. "She'll choose you. I know it."

"Well," Lautrec said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Looks like you've solved your own dilemma then, haven't you? Best of luck finding a woman who actually wants to be found." He turned to head outside, but halted after one step and spun back to lay his hand on the pyromancer's arm once more. "Oh, and if you bring this subject up to me again, I'll break your jaw. If you lay a hand on the witch without her sayso? I'll cut off what's between your legs and youwon't desire anything anymore. Understood?"

Laurentius' mouth fell agape.

Lautrec grimaced. "And don't make that face at your next potential love interest. Try a smile. That usually worked for me in Carim. Good luck."

With that, he left the man standing there and sauntered off into the storm; the wine working its way through him quite nicely by then.

The sky was a black blanket, dotted only by the occasional flash of yellow from some faraway bolt of lightning, and the Parish streets below were so slicked with rain, Lautrec knew the things would be traps beneath his feet if he stepped out atop them. He, thankfully, didn't have to. Quelana was standing at the very edge of the church's final step, the rain falling just shy of her as it rolled from the awning overhead.

Lust, Lautrec thought as he moved up behind her, his eyes tracing the figure of her robes against the backdrop of buildings beyond. Did he lust after the witch? Sure, he'd told her as much in one drunken confession or another. When he looked upon the moon at night, did he find himself wondering if the pale curves of the thing looked like what pale curves might await his hands beneath the witch's robes? Sure, but she was quite beautiful and he was but a man. Thoughts like those came for every man sooner or later if he's been away from the bedroom for long enough. His interest in the witch ran deeper, though. In fact, other than his sister's lifeless face and skins of wine, Quelana had been the one thing he could focus on for longer than a few minutes since Abby had plunged him into ruin.

"I heard its dangerous out here at night," he said softly so as not to startle her. "Quite brave of you, witch, to stand alone."

Quelana turned to him and her face glowed beneath her hood with moonlight, casting it an ever more pallid shade than usual. "Are you drunk right now?"

He liked to watch her lips as they formed words. They were pink, smooth,

things, and when they moved, he was helpless but to stare upon them. "I'm awake," he answered. "There's a very good chance I'm drunk anytime I'm awake."

Those lips set in hard lines; lines of reproach. "If you truly wish to accompany me to Izalith in two days time, you'd best start sobering yourself up. I won't take a drunk with me."

"Even a very talented drunk?"  
"Even Lordran's most talented drunk." "Harsh," he told her.

"This isn't a game to me," Quelana said. "In truth? I'm more frightened of returning to my home than anything I've feared in my entire life. If you think I intend to undertake such a task lightly-"

"Is that why you're out here?" He asked. "Trying to put some courage in you before the journey?"

"I... I don't know," she said, turning back to the storm (hiding her lips) and sighing. "I don't require much sleep anyway, but... I can't... I don't..."

He reached for her hand-  
-and Quelana snatched it away. "I'm not looking to be comforted." "I wasn't suggesting you were."

She faced him again, and Lautrec could not help but spot a rather large target on her cheek of pale flesh that looked ripe for kissing. Too much wine, he thought. I shouldn't have approached her. "Are you going to sober yourself for this journey or not? Tell me now, Lautrec, because if you're not..."

"First you answer this true," he said, prying his eyes from her face so that his thoughts could be his own again. "If I weren't a drunken, broken, man... what would you think of me? Tell it true, witch. I'm a grown man. I can handle it."

"What would I think of you?"

"That's right. I asked you if you desired after men the other night. You didn't give me a straight answer, but... I saw one clearly enough in your eyes." Pretty and as green as fresh summer grass, he almost added, but the small corner of his mind that remained sober got a hold of his tongue before he could.

Quelana took a deep breath. "I loved someone. You had the right of it." "A man?"

"Yes, a man," she confirmed. "A kind, comely, man named Salaman. That was... a long time ago."

"But you did love before..."

She turned to him, her eyes narrowing and flicking across the feature's of his face. After a moment, her hand reached for his chin and held it firmly in place as she leaned near to him. "You want to know if I could ever love you? Is that what this drunken interrogation is about?"

Lautrec would have answered if he hadn't been lost in those emerald green pits of her's.

She sighed. "The truth is I don't know, because I don't know you. And honestly? I don't think you know yourself. If you want even a chance at finding that out? Stop the drinking, try to speak with your sister and put that mad matter between you two to rest, and take something seriously. Care about something! Then? Then we'll both discover who you really are, Lautrec... and we can determine if we like the man we find."

If you lean in and kiss her now, you will throw the whole damned thing away, a voice commanded him, preventing him from attacking those dancing lips of her's that shined beneath the moonlight, inviting him to-

No, that sober corner of his mind demanded.

"Well?" Quelana asked. "Can you do that, knight of Carim? Can you sober up long enough to figure out who you are?"

His words might betray him if he spoke, so Lautrec only nodded his head.

Quelana reached for the skin of wine clutched weakly in his hand and removed it. "If you have another drink... you'll never receive the answer to your question." She nodded, held his eyes, and turned to head back inside.

Lautrec watched her go, swaying in the moonlight, his feet wanting to follow behind her, and that sober corner of his not letting them.

The next day, for better or for worse, he did not have a drink of wine. Not one drop.

Chapter 46

She dabbed at Solaire's brow with a dampened bit of cloth, and as she did, she studied the lines and angles of the man's face intently. Solaire was a handsome man with a strong jaw and a healthy complexion, but he was far from remarkable. If he's a God, Abby thought, he must be the most human-looking God that's ever walked Lordran. She pulled the cloth away, and fetched a cup to trickle cool water between his lips. The knight swallowed, but his eyes remained closed, and soon enough, water dribbled from the corner's of his mouth. Abby quickly replaced the cup with a dry cloth and cleaned his chin.

When she finished, she laid her hand upon his chest, watching it move, letting the slow ebb and flow of his breaths calm her. She brushed a strand of hair from his face and found herself smiling despite his condition. He'll wake, she thought. And when he does, he'll have quite the surprise waiting for him. She moved her hand to his forehead, letting her fingers fall gently to the flesh there. Hear me, Solaire, and hasten your recovery. Dark days are upon us, and I don't know how many we might have left. Hear me, Knight of Sunlight... and return to us.

The door creaked behind her, and Abby turned back expecting Rhea or Tarkus or Domhnall, but only Lautrec stood framed in the doorway. "Oh," she said before she could stifle the sound.

Lautrec nodded. "Come on, girl," he said. "I have need of you." "Me?"

"Oh, no, I was talking to our sleeping knight there. He does like to be called 'girl', right?"

For a moment, Abby could only stare at the man nonplussed. Then she realized he was joking and a smile crept upon her. "Are you... sober?"

Lautrec sighed. He held his hand out between them. It was trembling. "You know what that is?"

"...no?"

"It is the rather unpleasant 'shake' that accompanies a man who's trying to crawl himself out of a pit of booze. You only get it if you're succeeding. Yes, I'm sober. And that means my patience is even thinner than usual, so..." He stuck his arm out.

Abby turned to Solaire, leaned in to kiss his brow for luck in a hasty recovery, and clambered to her feet. She approached Lautrec, staring at his protruding elbow, half-wondering if she was imagining this strange change of demeanor in him. When Lautrec saw her hesitancy, he reached out, grabbed her wrist, and tucked her arm in place beneath his own. He

pulled her out into the hall before she could so much as fall in line beside him.

When she hurried her footsteps up next to his further down the hall, she turned and fixed him with a concerned look. "Are you alright, Lautrec?"

"I've been drunk for nearly two weeks. These last two days now I've been sober. Picture drifting about in a pleasant little dream for a long, long, time and then waking up to the cold, harsh, grey, world that is Lordran. No, I'm not alright. I'll live, though. ...probably."

"Oh, I see. Well, I guess that's good," Abby said as he led her around a turn in the hall. "Um... what do you need me for?"

"Several things."

Abby wasn't sure what that meant, but Lautrec's pace was not slowing, and with her arm firmly tucked beneath his own, she could only hurry along and wait to find out.

The first place he brought her was the bath chambers in the lower level of the church. Abby trusted the knight, certainly, but for one, brief, moment, a fear gripped her chest. Then Lautrec released her, stood out in front of a tall mirror and water basin, and extended his arms to his sides. "Armor," he said without bothering to turn around.

Abby was unsure of what he meant for a moment before her eyes floated to the corner of the chamber, where Lautrec's armor was piled together in a mound of gold. She hadn't seen him wearing that, since the day Patches threw him from a bridge.

"Abby," he called back impatiently.

"Oh, yes," she said, hurrying to gather the armor. When she'd returned (the pieces were heavy enough that she had to make three trips) she looked Lautrec over. "I've never done this before. I'm... not sure-"

"Here's a hint: the pieces that look like legs go on legs; the pieces that look like arms go on arms. You're a bright young thing. You'll get it."

Abby fished out a long, golden, piece of plating that was curved like a shin bone, and at once felt like a fool for even suggesting she wouldn't know how to dress him. She lowered to her knees, wrapped it around Lautrec's leg, and set to buckling it in place.

"When I was a boy, I squired for knights in Carim," Lautrec told her as she worked. "I used to love dressing them for battle. I would play out little fantasies in my head of their valiant bouts of combat: won, of course, because of how well I set their armor upon them. Being allowed to dress a knight was an act of honor and of trust, so don't think I'm having you do this just to push you around, girl."

"I didn't think that," Abby said, though his words were comforting and she found herselffilled with a sense of pride upon hearing them.

"The witch and I are leaving today," he told her as she moved upwards to his arms.

"I know," Abby said curtly; she'd been trying not to think of it.

"You'll be alright," he said, perhaps sensing the concern in her voice. "You've... you've come a long way from that doe-eyed thing I pulled out of the Asylum. Keep your wits about you and stick near to the friends you've made."

"I will."  
"And avoid Ben."

She was strapping his chest plate to his back plate, and was nearly finished when his words halted her fingers. "...why do you say that?"

"That boy has more anger in him that maybe even I do," Lautrec said, but after a moment, added, "Well, no, probably not more than me, but he certainly has less control of it. He's got resentments for you, me, probably half the damn castle coursing through him. Just... if they let him out of that cage upstairs, stay clear of him."

I don't like you, Ben's words wrung in her head from their previous nights conversation. Stay out of my way. "...alright," Abby said, returning to her task.

When it was done, Lautrec tested her work by crouching, swinging his arms out, tugging here and there as spots that might've been loose. At the end of it, he nodded satisfactorily. "Not bad for a first time." He stared at her, sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. It was, perhaps, the first time Abby saw the knight look somewhat uncomfortable. "How do I look?"

"How do you look?"

"You heard me, girl. Am I too far gone past that ambitious knight that first came upon you at the Asylum to be called handsome?"

He wants to impress Quelana, Abby thought, and though the notion should have made her sad or jealous or something... she found herself smiling instead. She'd worried about Lautrec often since his encounter with Anastacia, but seeing him fidgeting about in his armor, sober, and looking to impress Quelana... for the first time in a long time, Abby thought he might be alright after all.

"Abby," he said impatiently, breaking her line of thought.  
Her eyes found his and her smile widened. "You look very handsome,

Lautrec."

A subtle shift in his posture let her know the words brought him some sense of relief, at least.

"You could use a shave, though," Abby added.

He reached for the wild tangle of dirty-blond hairs growing around his chin. "Shave..." he muttered, as if remembering the word even existed. He spun to the mirror, yanked his dagger from his belt, and set about hacking away his unkempt forest of a beard. When it was done, he'd managed to cut it down to nearly a stubble; Abby finding herself quite impressed with his work, considering a dagger had been his only tool. "Better?"

"Better."

He nodded and stuck out his arm for her to take again. "Good. Come on. Let's go see what that blacksmith has thrown together for me."

Andre was hunched over a table when they came upon him; a big man and a bigger mane of greying white hair that swept over the table beneath like a blizzard. Upon their approach, he lifted his eyes, flicked them between Lautrec and herself, and rose. "Aye. 'Bout that time, knight, ey?"

"About that time," Lautrec confirmed.

Andre gestured for them to follow as he headed off towards the chapel. "You must've had some damned good smiths in Carim. I couldn't figure the hell out how to curve the blades like your old shotels. The weapons will serve ya, aye, but if you were thinkin' I was going to be able to clone the old damned things-"

"I wasn't," Lautrec said. "If they're even close, you'll have my gratitude, smith. Both time and supplies are in short commodity these days."

"That they are," Andre agreed. "But I'm damned good. Don't forget it."

The blacksmith halted them at a big, cast-iron, stove beside a weapon rack and a stone pit of fire; embers floating from within like burning tufts of snow. Andre bent forth-groaning like some old dog as he did-and fished the newly forged weapons from behind a bench. He held them before the fire, letting the light cast a shimmer against the steel of their blades. Andre was right: they didn't look like Lautrec's old shotels. To Abby, they looked far more dangerous. The blades were longer, less curved, more sharp, and the hilts were short, leather-banded, things with plugged ends. Andre passed them to Lautrec.

"You just put them things to good use bringin' us back that soul shard," Andre said. "And the witch too, of course. We've all taken quite a fondness to havin' her pretty face around. You see to it that it comes back just as pretty."

"Well, smith," the knight said, swiping at the air beside him and rolling his wrist about to, perhaps, test the weight and balance of the weapons, "you weren't lying." Lautrec's grey eyes lifted to Andre. "You are damned good."

Though Andre spoke no gratitude for the compliment, Abby saw a look of pride wash across the wrinkled features of his face. The two men shook hands, and then Lautrec was pulling her away again.

He led her down the rows of pews, where the men and women of the church were just starting in on their day, chattering and dressing and feasting on whatever bit of the previous night's dinner they'd saved for a 'breakfast', and halted her, abruptly, near the end, where the corner of the room was sectioned off behind big, burgundy-colored, drapes. A small light glowed over its top, flickering against the walls at its flanks.

Abby knew whose 'tent' that was. She turned on Lautrec, mouth agape, and shook her head; a flutter had taken her heart. "Lautrec... what are you going to do?"

The knight raised a brow. "Calm yourself, girl. I'm the one who should be wearing your expression right now." He took a deep breath, removed the gauntlet from one of his hands, and extended it to her. "Take hold of me, Abby, I can already feel my blood heating."

Abby grabbed for it immediately.

"Don't start in yet, though," Lautrec said. "With your little... 'gift'. Give me a moment of... honesty."

Abby swallowed. "Are you really going to go in there? You... are you really going to do this, Lautrec?"

"I was planning on it, and, of course, your words are stirring quite a confidence in me," he said dryly before sighing. "Believe me, I don't want to do this. I don't even want to try, in truth."

"Then don't!" Abby pleaded. She couldn't imagine this going any way but bad.

"Again, thank you for that swell of confidence, girl, but I have to. It is... one of the witch's conditions." Lautrec ran a hand through his hair, closed his eyes, took a breath. He looked like a man about to leap from a cliff, or attempt a sprint across a bed of lava, and, Abby thought, perhaps he was doing just that. She tightened her grip on his hand. "Not yet," he insisted. His arms were trembling far worse than they'd been upstairs when he'd demonstrated his 'booze' shakes or whatever they were.

"...Lautrec?" Abby softly called after a long moment of silence between them.

"Yeah, alright," he answered. "Go on. Do it."

She did it. Her 'gift' as they all called it wasn't a difficult thing to channel anymore. Abby rubbed her fingers against his palm, and she could feel the anger there, as if it were a physical manifestation. Suppressing it was only a matter of reaching out her calmness and holding the anger at bay. She reached, grabbed, and removed.

The tension fled Lautrec's body at once, a look of serenity replacing the anger and anxiety that had been gripping every inch of it. He breathed, stepped forward, and shoved the drapes aside to enter the tent.

Anastacia was seated in the corner, her legs folded up beneath her on the floor, and she'd been reading from a book by candlelight when the movement must have caught her eye. She looked up, first to Abby, then to Lautrec, and her face froze in an expression of absolute terror. Her eyes widened to saucers beneath the hood of her dingy robes and the book spilled out of her hands, leaving trembling fingers grasping at nothing in its wake. Her mouth moved, perhaps in attempt at a cry, perhaps in attempt at a scream, but no sound escaped but a quiet whimper.

If whatever emotion Abby was keeping at bay with her ability flared, she knew right away. She'd felt it flaring within the Taurus Demon so long ago at the Firelink Shrine. She'd felt it again-far, far, worse-in Lautrec at the Duke's Archives. The man's anger, his rage, his hatred, was flaring again now, but in a more subdued, controlled, fashion. Still, Abby knew if she released his hand even for a moment... that anger would come roaring out of the dark, like a beast unleashed, and she didn't want to even consider what it might want with him. Or Anastacia, for that matter.

Lautrec stood staring at his sister. He did not speak, and neither did she. Abby watched the two of them, wishing she didn't have to intrude upon whatever was transpiring between them in their eyes, but knowing she had no choice. Lautrec's anger-beast kept biting at her hand, but Abby refused it passage time and time again. In the corner, Anastacia sniffled, and when Abby looked, there were two streams of tears rolling either of her cheeks. Lautrec did not cry-Abby wasn't even sure such a thing was possible when she was using her 'gift' on him-but there was a wistful sadness in those grey eyes of his, and the corners had grown rheumy.

After a long, long, moment, Lautrec simply turned to her and quietly said, "Take me out of here, girl."

Abby didn't need to be told twice. She pulled him back outside the tent at once, glancing one last time at Anastacia, who only quietly watched them go as her tears fell and fell; as endless as the rains outside.

In the hall, Abby guided him around the big passageway that opened into a smaller, more secluded, section of the church. She pulled him to a bench there beside the wall, sat him down, and made to sit next to him.

"No," he halted her. "Let go of my hand and go stand in the other room for a bit."

"Are you okay?"

"Do as I say, girl. Now."

She did. The moment she'd rounded the corner, a crash sounded, and Abby figured it was the sound of the bench Lautrec had been sitting on breaking apart beneath his boot or perhaps his fist. She didn't dare steal a peek to find out, and when the curious eyes of those close enough in the church hall to hear the sound turned her way, she simply held up a hand and shook her head.

Lautrec still hadn't emerged when Quelana came walking down between the pews towards her. She smiled upon seeing Abby, but whatever expression Abby showed in return, stole it away at once. "What's wrong, Abby?" she asked, stepping beside her and taking hold of her arm.

"Lautrec... he talked to Anastacia. Or, well, he tried to. I don't think it went very well. They didn't say a word and now he's in the next room breaking things."

"He actually tried?" Quelana asked, lifting her brow. "I... I didn't actually expect him to..." She shook her head. "Gods, this is my fault."

"It is your fault," Lautrec said, walking around the edge of the passageway. He, surprisingly, didn't look nearly as furious as Abby had imagined. In fact, he seemed almost calm. He walked right up between them and stared into Quelana's eyes. "It's you're fault, witch. And you have my gratitude for it."

"Gratitude?" Quelana echoed.

"If I didn't at least try, it might've weighed heavily enough on me to diminish my abilities out there," Lautrec explained. "That would be a very bad thing with Darkwraiths running around. Ana... I can't talk to her. I don't think I might ever be able to. But I looked at her. And what I saw looking back... it was... not entirely a bad thing." He turned on Abby. "Here, girl. Give this to Ana. Wait till I go."

He handed her a folded piece of paper. Abby closed her fist around it. "What is it?"

"It's... something that might be true one day. If the Gods aren't good, and I don't make it back here... she deserves it. Ana, that is. My... my sister."

"We'll make it back," Quelana said, and Abby saw the witch's pale hand reach out from within her robes and take Lautrec's. Lautrec's eyes found her's and held them. Abby averted her own eyes, feeling, again, like an intruder. Quelana took her by the shoulders after a moment and smiled.

"Abby... of everyone I will miss, I will miss you the most."

Abby returned the smile. "Thank you, Quelana. I'll be waiting for your return, so... don't be long, alright?"

Quelana opened her arms and wrapped her within them. Abby squeezed the witch tightly, wishing she could just hold on and keep her there so there didn't have to be a dangerous journey at all. But that was a girl's desire, like her yearning for Lautrec's affection had been, and Abby knew it was a woman's strength she needed to show. When they pulled apart, she nodded. "I'll see you soon."

Quelana returned the gesture. "Come. Walk with us outside."

The rains were as subdued, thankfully, as they'd been since the dreary things started falling nearly two weeks ago outside. Abby walked beside Quelana, Lautrec trailing along behind them, to the last flat bit of the Parish before the stone broke to stairs, and, further on, a slope of land that twisted down to the Burg and to the bridge where Lautrec himself had been flung from so long ago. And how brave he had fought that day, Abby thought. I only hope if harm should come looking for them, he will fight just as brave and true.

"This old armor is heavier than I remember," Lautrec said, stepping around them to pull a deep breath of afternoon air; his golden plating glinting against the chunk of pale sun visible over the Parish rooftops. "I'd never considered leathers as a viable armor until running around with them these last few weeks. Easier on the back and higher mobility. Who would've thought it. They don't tell knights about those sorts of things, just stick you in your metal coffin and send you on your way. I've got a whole new respect for Tarkus. That man's armor... it probably weighs at least as much as the man himself."

"Speaking of that man," Quelana said, taking Abby by the shoulders once again. "He's leading a team into the city tomorrow to retrieve the Lordvessel. You be careful around here when him and whoever he brings along are gone, Abby. Stay away from Patches and Griggs. Ben, too."

"Already gave the girl that bit of advice," Lautrec said.

"I doubt Domhnall is going," Quelana continued. "Stay near him. And keep watch for Darkwraiths. And keep yourself armed with a blade, even if you're not particularly skilled with one. What about that pyromancy glove? Do you remember the spell I taught you in the Burg? Why don't you-"

"I'll be fine, Quelana," Abby said with a laugh. "I appreciate your concern, but... I'm not the naive girl you met at the Asylum anymore. I can take care of myself."

Quelana took a breath, her fingers rubbing at the edges of Abby's jerkin as

she looked her over. "Yes, I... I know. I just want you to stay safe." She stared, perhaps considering something, then pulled Abby into her arms and squeezed again. Abby was more than happy to squeeze back.

When they broke apart, Lautrec stepped beside her, clapped her on the shoulder, and bowed his head. "You'll be fine. And we'll be back soon enough. Try and get Andre to make something besides a cold stew for the return party, will you?"

"Will do," Abby said.

"And... don't forget that," he added, nodding to the bit of paper in her hand.

"I wouldn't."

"We'll see you soon, Abby," Quelana said, squeezed her hand, and turned.

She watched them go from the church steps as the light rain drizzled atop her hair and shoulders: a witch in a fall of black robes and a knight shining in golden armor that she'd met only a few weeks earlier, but which felt like a lifetime ago. Abby had made a few enemies and a few friends, but none, she reflected, had impacted her as much as the two of them. As they took the curve of the street and disappeared behind the portcullis dividing it from the church, Abby had the distinct feeling she'd never see them again. It saddened her enough to drive the thought from her mind immediately, turn, and head back inside.

She'd just made it between the first set of doors when a hand clamped over her mouth, an arm wrapped her torso, and she was dragged right back outside, writhing and squirming against whomever her captor was the whole way.

Outside, she was spun loose and collapsed against the wet stones of the church's outer wall. A hand fell across her mouth again, pushing back till her head was pinned in place. Pharis' vibrant red pigtails bounced in her vision, and before Abby knew what was happening, a dagger, sharpened to a fine point, was dangled before her eyes. Behind it, Pharis crouched over her, smirking. "Make a sound and I'll take your eye. Got it?"

Abby swallowed, narrowed her vision on the dagger point floating dangerously near to her eye, and nodded. The hand was removed from her mouth. "What are you-"

"Shut up," the woman snapped, and it was then Abby noticed Patches, too, was outside with them, standing a bit further back, keeping a watch on the church's entrance. "You're getting Ben out of that cell." Pharis said; it was not a question.

"I... I don't know how. I don't have a key. I-"

"Shut up!" The woman commanded again, laying the dagger's blade against Abby's cheek and sliding it up towards her eye. "I don't care how you do it, just do it. One of you bastards set him up. He didn't kill no child, so you just go and get him free." The dagger slid closer to her eye. It reached the point where Abby could see the tip rising in her vision, eager to plunge in and blind her. "I know you can't die. But you can hurt plenty good, I'm guessin'."

"Aye," Patches spoke up. A grin rose on the Hyena's face as he turned to her. "And your little friends can die, so don't go thinkin' about opening your big mouth to anyone about our little conversation here. It would be a... real shame if, say, Domhnall went to sleep one night and just... didn't wake up. Hee-hee."

"You get Ben out of that cell," Pharis growled. "I don't care if you have to get on your filthy little knees and beg Solaire or Tarkus of whoever to give you a key. Do it. Everyday you don't, you get hurt, and one of your 'friends' gets worse. Be smart, you little bitch, and get him free sooner rather than later."

With that, the woman shoved Abby's head back against the stone, sheathed the dagger, and Patches and her headed back inside; vanishing as quickly as they'd appeared.

Abby collected herself, dusted off her breeches, and clambered back to her feet. For whatever reason, she wasn't worried. She wasn't even scared. Only a strange calmness settled over her. She looked to the sun climbing ever higher in the rain-soaked skies, watched it for awhile before sighing and heading inside; Patches and Pharis' 'threat' already fading from her mind.

She peeked in on Anastacia's tent in the church hall and offered a smile. "He left this for you, Ana," she said, holding the piece of paper between them.

The woman's eyes were still red and rheumy, and when they narrowed on the paper, for one moment, Abby thought Lautrec's sister was going to simply deny taking it. Then the firekeeper leaned forward and closed her slender fingers around its edge. Abby watched, unable to look away, as the woman uncreased the fold and read.

Anastacia's reaction was strange. First, her breath caught queerly in her throat, then she immediately closed the fold again and held the paper to her chest. She sat that way, staring blankly at the floor, perhaps forgetting that Abby was even present to see, and after a long moment, she did something that looked so foreign and unusual, Abby had to squint to make sure it was real.

Anastacia smiled. The firekeeper's eyes raised to Abby's own, and a different kind of tear rolled her cheek from the one before. "Thank you,"

she whispered. "Thank you so much."

Abby smiled, nodded, and left.

She was thinking about the notes contents and what they could have possibly held to cause such a reaction in Anastacia when she saw Domhnall seated at the longtable, and all at once, Patches' warning-Would be a shame if Domhnall just never woke up one night-rang in her head. She went to him, intending to lead him somewhere private and discuss how to handle the situation, but Domhnall's eyes spotted her first and he spoke.

"Abby, have you seen Laurentius?"

"Laurentius? No, not since dinner last night. Why?"

"The man's gone!" Dom explained, throwing his arms to his sides. "All his stuff is missing... all his clothes... his pryomancy glove. It's as if the man left for vacation or something. Don't suppose there are many spots left vacationing in in Lordran is the problem. Not safe ones anyway. Aye siwmae. I hope he's alright."

"Yes..." Abby muttered, and a new image flashed in her mind: the image of a heartbroken man who'd been watching Quelana from the shadows two nights earlier, and suddenly, she found herself hoping for the witch's safety instead of the pyromancer's.

"Domhnall... we need to talk."

Chapter 47

A dark shroud had covered the lands, and beneath it were a thousand dark creatures moving as one; a black hand spreadings its fingers out to cradle Lordran and all the living souls that remained to it inside. The hand moved as a single entity because it was controlled by a single entity: him. He willed it to burn the forests so that the path might be clear and it was done. He willed it to smash the forts and barriers, the castles and constructs, the cities and walls, the towers, the barracks, the mountains themselves if they stood in his way, and so it was done. He willed it to destroy so that what once was could be once more, and what lies and deceptions had risen up like false prophets and imposter deities to plague the lands would lie in ruin, as they should, as they deserved. A fitting sacrifice to the Lord of that Dark Hand. A fitting end to a world soaked in treachery. A fitting start to a new era.

Rise and rule, whispers in the dark; voices from beyond.  
Rise and rule and rise and rule and rise and rule and rise and-

-o-o-o-

Ben's eyes opened to the darkness of his cell. He did not stir. He was used to the darkness now, and awakening to it was like returning to an old friend; its blackness draped around him like the embracing arm of one who has been missed dearly. He breathed, and in his breath he could feel his lungs drinking the darkness. It tasted sweet-like a fine mead upon his tongue-and the sweetness was enough to make him smile despite the anger he could feel prowling about beneath his chest, stalking, waiting, hungry.

He lied there awhile, letting his nightmare play in a loop, his mind's eye casting the images upon the black ceiling above his cot. He wasn't sure what it all meant, but he'd been having similar visions in his sleep since they'd locked him away. Abby, once, had spoken of her sleep being plagued with night terrors during her stay at the Duke's Archives, and Ben found himself wondering if they'd been similar to his own. If they had, he once again found her weakness sickening. The things weren't so bad, and certainly not enough to drive a person-let alone the Chosen Undead-to madness. Sometimes, even, they were welcome company to his vision-deprived mind.

His vision was not deprived much longer. A spill of warm, orange, light came flickering upon the walls outside his cell, and Ben could hear the soft scraping of feet on stone nearing. He rose, moved to the bars of his prison, and took hold of them, waiting for Sieglinde to bring him more of Andre's rotten, cold, stew. Only, this time, the big, broad-shouldered, figure of the woman was not the one that cast itself in a shadowed silhouette upon the wall, but a smaller, more crooked, figure. Ben

narrowed his eyes upon the steps to watch as, first, the torch came wobbling up into his sights, then, a fall of violet robes cascading around a small man in waves as he hobbled up the stairs.

Griggs, Ben thought. Or Logan. Or whatever the man wants to be called. He's come to free me. Griggs paused at the first break in the stairs before turning and ascending the rest of the way, leaning beside the wall and catching his breath. If the sorcerer Logan truly lives beneath that man's skin, his powers must be diminished to the point of almost nothing, Ben thought, watching as the old wizard's breath returned to him. What use is he to me then?

Griggs pulled a walking staff from within his robes, poked at the stone underfoot with the gnarled end of the the thing, and used it to aid his climb to the attic cell. When he'd made it-his torch sending flickering light into the shadowed nook of his robe's hood-his mouth spread into that queer smile he was so often seen wearing, and he bowed his head. "My Chosen. I apologize for not coming to see you sooner."

"Get me out," Ben said at once.

"A difficult request."

"Get me out. Do you hear me? I could have told someone about your little... 'trick' or whatever it is. I could have told them you claim to be Logan. I didn't. I held my tongue and I've served my-unjust-time in this rat hole. Now I want out. So get me out."

"I haven't a key, my Chosen."  
"Then go kill the man who does and return to me."

Griggs' eyes narrowed with what might have been interest. "Kill? My Chosen... I thought you said you weren't a murder."

"I... I'm-" Ben stammered, took a breath, lowered his head. "I'm not. Just... steal they key, then."

"Hmmm," Griggs hummed, lifting his gaze to the ceiling. A blank expression befell him, as if he'd forgotten what they were talking about entirely. When he looked back to Ben, his smile had vanished. "Kindness then, Chosen? Hmm... you do remember what happened last time you were kind when you shouldn't have been, don't you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I advised you what to do with that whole 'Abby situation', My Chosen. I suggestedthat you should have dealt with her as a Lord deals with any unruly subordinate. You didn't take my advice, though, Chosen, and now look what's happened? The girl lives on and champions yet another false prophet to save Lordran. And you? Oh, poor Chosen, you are framed and

locked away and forgotten. Just like they'd always intended you to be."

"Framed?" Ben echoed. A strange feeling had soaked into his chest to accompany his anger. It might've been fear, but... he certainly had no reason to be afraid. Something else then, he thought and ignored it. "What do you mean framed?"

"Oh, Chosen," Griggs said, shaking his head. "They've set you up. They wanted you out of the way and so: here you are. That boy they claim you killed? Thomas, I believe his name is? Let me ask you: did you see his body?"

"What? His body? No, but..."

"Ah, that's because there is no body. The boy has been hidden away to maintain this little ruse of theirs, but he is not dead. It is as I said, they've set you up, my Chosen. Set you up so that their sweet little girl-champion and her brave knight of Sun can go trotting off to the Kiln together and end Lordran... forever."

"Who," Ben snapped. Whatever feeling had been beside his anger was gone-smothered-and a profound fury has twisted up around his bones, heating them, and gripping his every muscle. He grit his teeth to stop himself from shouting. "Who did this to me, Griggs? Who!?"

"My Chosen," Griggs cooed, released his walking cane to lay his hand on Ben's own. "All of them did this to you. Abby. Solaire. Lautrec. The witch. The blacksmith. More. They all worked together to conspire against you and remove you from the picture."

Ben's arms trembled. Their faces flashed before his mind, and he couldn't help but vision daggers driving into their eyes so that they cried rivers of blood.

"And worst of all?" Griggs continued. "Is that now their foolish plans have gone far beyond simply restarting the cycle of this world with Abby. Now... now they intend to set the Knight Solaire upon the flames of the Kiln. ...do you know what would happen if they succeed in that endeavor, my Chosen?"

Ben couldn't speak. His anger was too thickly laid upon his tongue. He swallowed, stared, shook his head.

"They would bring about the end. Those 'other worlds' I spoke of that my machine revealed? Those worlds would come crashing down upon us, tearing the very fabrics of our realities into bits, and leaving only but a gaping void of nothingness in its place. My Chosen... before, those heretics that would deny you your rightful Lordrship would have merely restarted an ancient cycle of repetition if they'd succeeded. But now? Now their actions would bring about the end of time. The end of all things."

"No," Ben muttered; it was the only word he could seem to conjure up from the boiling pit of hate his lungs had become.

"'No' indeed, my Chosen." Griggs' fingered rubbed against the back of Ben's hand. The man's eyes narrowed and his smile returned to him. "Benjamin... what did it feel like the last time you killed?"

The man's question pulled Ben from his daze. He shook his head. "What? What are you asking me about?"

"When you killed Gwyndolin. How did you feel."

"I felt good, what do you think I felt like? I'd just saved an entire damned castle of people with my bare hands and, at the time, I thought it was going to... I don't know. I thought it was going to change things for me. Make them all... respect me."

"Mmm," Griggs hummed his acquiescence. "You ended life to save life and it felt good. It didn't have the effect you desired, but you also didn't have me beside you to aid you. Not that you need aid, my Chosen, but I could have... sped things along a bit. Regardless, taking life so that other life may be preserved is one of the fundamental qualities a Lord can display, Chosen. It is a difficult decision like that one that either births cowards... or champions. You made the right call then." He leaned closer to the bars of the cell. "Make it again, my Chosen."

Ben didn't care for the way the man's breath smelled; just as sweet as the darkness tasted. He narrowed his eyes shrewdly upon the sorcerer. "...how?"

Griggs whispered, "Kill the heretics. Every one of them. Kill them and take your rightful place as their Lord."

Ben swallowed. His throat had turned to tree bark and his tongue felt numb in his mouth. "I... can't. Even if I wanted to. I'm one man. Even with you and Patches and Pharis... there are too many."

"Too many for us alone, certainly," Griggs said. His smile widened. "A good thing, then, that we are not alone."

-a thousand dark creatures moving as one; a black hand spreading its fingers-

"The Darkwraiths," Ben whispered the word carefully, wary of the danger it housed. "You're talking about the Darkwraiths. The fallen knights. I... (black hand spreading fingers) see them. I see them in my dreams. And I... I hear (rise and rule) whispers at night."

"Whispers, Chosen?"  
"In my head," Ben told him. "Telling me to rule and... and to rise."

Griggs nodded. "Interesting."

Ben tried swallowing again, but his throat refused him. "Is it true? Are the Darkwraiths... could they be controlled?"

"Yes, my Chosen."

"Then why am I still here? Why haven't they come and freed me!? Why-"

"Because they aren't yours, Chosen. Not yet."

"But why!?"

Griggs leaned forth and gripped his hand so tightly, Ben recoiled from the bars. "Because the wraiths will only serve the Dark Lord of Lordran."

"B-But you said I could-"

"You could be that. You aren't, though. Not yet. You have to want it, Ben. You have to believe it. You have to prove it."

"I want it! If it means freedom and-and power over an army that will obey me so I can... so I can-"

"Stop the heretics from ending our world? Protect Lordran from the savages who would see it to ruin? Save the ones your care about?"

"Yes!" Ben snapped. "Yes! If they will help me, Griggs, I swear it. I will be this 'Dark Lord'. I swear it!"

"Your word is more than enough for me, Chosen, but for the Darkwraiths themselves? You'll need to go a step further, I'm afraid."

"Further?"

"The priestess, Rhea, made an interesting observation in the heretics little 'meeting' the other night. She said the old clerics of the first age of men cast ancient miracles upon the grounds of this church. The Darkwraiths are forbidden from coming to cleanse the lands, Chosen, as long as this place of worship exists.. The church will have to go."

"Go? How?"

"Burn it to the ground, Benjamin," Griggs whispered; his fingers rubbing at Ben's hand again. "Burn it and send the rats within out into the storm... and to their judgement at the hands of the wraiths." Griggs reached into his robes, fished out a dagger, and laid the hilt in Ben's palm. "I don't have a key, Chosen. I do have that. It is yours now. When the time comes, run it across your throat. You will be taken from this cell and reborn in the flames downstairs. Then? ...then they have to be punished, Chosen. If you are to be the 'Dark Lord' who will save Lordran and lead the Darkwraiths and the people willing to bend their knee to you into a new era, all

heretics must perish. Including Gwyn. Then, when we leave the Kiln, and the first flames fade to nothing, it will be you, Benajmin! You who has deserved and been denied your respect and your admiration. You who has been held back and left behind time and time again by the inferior creatures that crawl around you like insects at the boots of a God! It will be your world, then, Chosen. And nothing and no one will ever deny you respect again!"

Ben stepped away from the bars. His breath refused to leave his lungs. His head spun. His feet felt unnatural against the ground beneath him. The darkness... the darkness of his cell no longer felt like an old friend. It felt like an ocean of black waiting to drown and smother him beneath it. He sat on his cot and grabbed fistfuls of his hair to drive the madness away. He felt like crying. Crying. What Lord would cry? What kind of 'Lord' could be so weak?

"Power, Benjamin," Griggs' voice came calmly from outside the cell. "It is the thing that all lords and rulers and kings of these great lands of ours have had. It is the one thing you, at the moment, do not. Take your power, Ben. Burn this vile chapel back to the ash it rose from and execute the heretics that refuse you as their Lord. Do that and all Lordan's remaining 'power' will be yours to wield."

No, a voice pleaded in Ben's head that was not much different sounding than Abby's had been when he'd spoken to her two nights earlier. Ben shook his head. "I can't. I can't become that..."

Griggs was silent; the occasional crackling of the torch in his hand the only sound to fill the quiet. Its flames danced wildly upon his face, orange and red, and behind him, the shadow of his robes danced wildly upon the wall. After a long moment, he spoke again, "You've taken a fondness to that woman downstairs. Pharis her name is I believe?"

Ben looked to him. "...yes."

Griggs nodded. "I know. I know this because I've heard other whisperings from the heretics, my Chosen. Cruel whispers. ...murderous whispers."

Ben rose and crossed to the cell door. "What are you talking about?"

"They mean to strip you of all you have, my Chosen. Your sanity, hence the darkness of this cell they've left you in. Your pride, which is why they made such a fool of you at the end of your little 'meeting'. Your friends. ...even your love."

"I don't... I don't love her," Ben said. He pictured Pharis' face and it stirred a warmth in him, but it was not 'love'. At least, he didn't think it was.

"No. But someday you might. And who else will you love? The rest of the sorry lot of woman around here despise you. They know what this 'Pharis' could be for you. And, Benjamin... they intend to take it away."

"What does that mean!?" Ben shouted, grabbing the door's bars.

"It means that one day your little girlfriend might just up and... 'disappear'. Some lying heretic, I'm sure, will claim they saw her running off back to lands of the Forest Hunters or some other place, but... that won't be the truth, Chosen, will it?"

"Gods... they're going to kill her..." Ben muttered. His mind joined his tongue in its numbness.

"I'm afraid so, my Chosen."  
Ben shook his head. "Why... why are they doing this to me?"

"Because they haven't punished in a long, long, time, Chosen. And when subjects go unpunished, they grow unruly."

Rise and rule.

"If only they had someone to... show them just how unruly they've grown."

Rise and rule and rise and rule and-

"If only they were made to see the only true path to their salvation was at the feet of their Dark Lord. The Dark Lord who will save Lordran, and, ultimately, all the lives and souls and worlds tied to it. If only.... if only, my Chosen."

Ben looked to the dagger in his hand. Take lives to save lives, he thought. Rise and rule.

"On the morrow," Griggs said. "That mountain of a man, Tarkus, is taking a good number of able-bodied fighters up to the city of Anor Londo. They're to retrieve the Lordvessel. I say: good. Let them. Less work for you and I. But while they're gone... this place will be awfully unguarded, Chosen. What a wonderfully opportune time it will be for some... punishing."

Take lives to save lives and rise and rule and take lives and rule and save lives and rise and-

"The hour grows late," Griggs said. "And an old man like me would best be served catching some sleep, I believe. Perhaps... perhaps I will see you tomorrow, my Chosen? Tarkus has planned his departure early. That leaves a whole day for us to... get together."

Ben turned the dagger over in his hand. The torch-flame flickered against the steel surface. "Get together..."

He wasn't sure how long he'd stared at that dagger, maybe a moment, maybe an eternity, but the next time Ben lifted his eyes, Griggs and his torch were gone, and the cell was a thick blanket of black once more. Ben

groped his way to the cot, lied upon it, and rested the dagger near his throat, letting the steel kiss at the soft flesh beneath his neck. He cried then. He didn't mind. They were not tears of weakness or of fear or of madness or of worry. They were tears of sympathy, for the atrocities he now knew he might have to commit, and-atrocities or not-he would commit them if they wouldn't listen; he had to.

So that he could rise.

And so that he could rule.

He slept with the dagger still at his throat, and the images of a church engulfed in flames dancing through his dreams; a black hand gathering into a fist beneath the storms outside to watch. And to wait: wait for their Lord to lead them.

Chapter 48

His dreams were of the sun, as they often would be in times of trouble or duress, and when he woke from them, the first things his eyes glimpsed were the mighty golden rays of Lordran's watchful protector shafting through the broken rectangle of stained glass near the foot of his bed, laying upon his legs, keeping vigilance over him as it always had; as it always would.

Solaire sat upright. His entire body begged him at once not to, but he ignored his joints aching cries and his muscle's screaming protests and swung his legs from the bed anyway. His left arm was slung in a bandage, his ribs were taped up, and at least a half-dozen cuts and scrapes along his legs stung after setting his weight upon them. He thought at once of the Darkwraiths. They were persistent, monstrous, things, and the last moment he could remember was fleeing a small army of them in a storm, at night, Tarkus at his side, the rest of the men behind them... fallen.

Praise the Sun, he thought with a wistful shake of his head. They are all dead. And yet I live on.

He'd been thinking of their faces, of their names, when motion in the corner of the room caught his eye. He looked to see Abby scrunched up into a ball on a chair, sleeping. She had stirred but not awoken. On the table beside her was an opened book, a washcloth, pail, and fresh bandages. She's been taking care of me. Good girl.

Solaire-with some effort-rose and crossed to her. He laid his hand upon her shoulder and shook gently. "Abby," he called.

The girl stirred again. Her eyes flickered once, twice, and-

-she pulled a dagger, hidden away beneath the book beside her, free and threw herself back in the chair; the blade held before her in a white- knuckled, two-handed, defensive grip.

"Abby!" Solaire shouted, raising his hands to show her he meant no harm. He kept a watchful eye on that dagger between them. The blade was sharpened to a fine edge; the sunlight shimmered upon its surface.

Abby stared at him for a moment, looked to the empty bed, and lowered the blade. The girl let the breath that had caught in her chest loose and put a hand to her brow. "Solaire, I'm sorry."

"It is... alright, my lady." He reached carefully for her arm and put pressure on it to lower the dagger between them. "I've survived many battles and wars in my lifetime. That was about as close to my end as I've come." He smiled.

Abby set the dagger aside and took her face in her hands. "Gods, I'm so

sorry. I..." She looked to him. "Are you alright, Solaire? Rhea said to make sure you didn't get out of bed when you woke. I didn't mean to wake you. Was I talking in my sleep?"

"No, my lady." He laughed. "I simply woke. It must've been my time." Abby nodded, but there was a peculiar hesitancy in her expression as she looked upon him. "Abby? Is there... something wrong?"

"Wrong? Oh, no. I just... I was thinking about things and... Solaire, I am glad to see you've recovered, but... can I ask you something personal?"

"For you, my lady, I will answer anything. I owe you at least that much for watching over me while I slept."

"What were your parents like?"

"Parents?" An image as clear as if freshly painted by Lordran's most vivd artist flashed before his mind: the wonderful, warming, image of pure golden light. "I don't truly have any memories of my childhood, so, in turns, I have none of my parents. I remember the sun's light, there beside me, always beside me, but little else, I'm afraid, Abby." He looked to the partially broken window, where those yellow shafts were poking through. He stuck his hand beneath one and made to catch its warmth in his palm. "Perhaps it is the reason I've been searching after the Sun and its embrace ever since."

"No memories at all?"

Solaire shrugged. "Memories are funny things, my lady. When you get to be my age, you'll find them running off and hiding away from you more often than not. You won't miss them, because you won't realize you've lost them, but when they come back around to peek their heads out of some shadowed alcove of your mind?" His smile widened. "There are few things as pleasant in life."

Abby narrowed her eyes pensively upon his own. "That is... sad, Solaire. Must it be that way for everyone?"

Solaire lowered his hand to her. When she took it, he pulled her to her feet. "All things must be the way they are, my lady, or else they would not be at all. Praise the Sun. Walk with me."

Solaire dressed with a bit of Abby's help when his muscles-soar and weakened from misuse-required it, and they headed off to the lower level of the church as Abby filled him in on what he'd missed while he'd been bed-ridden. The Darkwraiths had not come upon the church. That was a good thing. Lautrec and Quelana had departed for Izalith the day before. That was a... strange thing. Solaire would certainly miss the witch's power and the knight's battle prowess, but their mission, Abby explained, was of the utmost importance. The way to the Kiln was sealed, the Lordvessel missing and, likely, emptied, and the Bequeathed Lord Soul shards need

be collected immediately should they wish to finish the battle against Gwyn. Solaire noted a peculiar look come to the girl's face once again when she spoke of the Lord of Cinder, but it passed quickly enough and Solaire did not bother pursuing it.

The girl was just finishing a tale of Benjamin's suspected crime and imprisonment when they reached the main hall, and Tarkus' booming voice came bouncing off the high walls around them. "Solaire!"

The big man stood from the crowded longtable, his black iron armor rising from a sea of brown cloth, and lurched around its edge. He laughed as he approached and clapped his hand against Solaire's shoulder. "Two days before Rhea expected you to wake. I told the woman, Solaire. Told her to halve whatever expectancy she had. You fight with a man long enough, you come to know what he's made of, and you, my friend, have iron as strong as my armor in yourblood. Welcome back."

"Good to be back, friend." Six names, six faces, six corpses. "Tarkus... do I remember it true? Did all the men we set out with fall to the Darkwraiths?"

The man's look darkened beneath his shaggy fall of hair. "Aye. Bastard creatures."

Solaire sighed. "We could not retrieve their bodies. We can at least send them off proper in prayer. Beneath the Sun. Come."

"Now?"

"Now," Solaire confirmed, clapped Tarkus' shoulder, and sidled past him to head outside.

Less than half those who'd been seated around the longtable joined them outside, beneath the drizzling morning rains and grey skies, and those who did wore disinterested expressions and fiddled restlessly with their clothing or weapons. The men who'd accompanied him to Anor Londo had been chosen by Solaire not only for their combat abilities, but for their status amongst those who'd survived the Archives. They had no families, no lovers, no attachments, and so as he called their names out loud, looking skyward, a hand held to his chest, no tears were spilled on that morning for the fallen; only the rain left to soak the onlooker's cheeks.

"They were under my command," Solaire said as his eyes swept the ranks of the indifferent crowd; a few of their indifferent eyes turning his way. "Their demise is my burden to bear. As any man who falls under my command. Praise the Sun, friends, and may it guide those who we've lost to the next life in warmth and in safety. Praise the Sun."

A quiet smattering of the words came in return. Solaire sighed. It would have to do. "Thank you for your time."

When the crowd dispersed, Solaire was left standing alone at the top of a flight of stone stairs that carried up to the Parish walkway. He was readying to lower to a knee and pay his reverence to the Sun above when a hand fell upon his shoulder. He turned to see the crowd hadn't entirely dispersed. Tarkus, Rhea, Rickert, Domhnall, and Abby were gathered behind him. Every one of them wore the matching expression of a person holding their tongue, but losing their grip.

"Friends," Solaire greeted them, ignoring the peculiarity of their looks. "I assure you, I am fine. You all have my thanks for what part you may have played in aiding my recovery. Tarkus... you have been a dear friend and ally far beyond what I ever could have hoped for. If it weren't for you, I would have surely fallen alongside the rest in Anor Londo. You have my most sincere gratitude."

Tarkus bowed.

When none of them spoke, Solaire frowned. "Is everything alright?"

It was Tarkus who-after a shared moment of hesitancy amongst them- stepped forth and ran a meaty hand through his hair. "Solaire... we need to talk."

"Is it trouble?" Solaire asked. His hand fell to the hilt of his sunlight straight sword, his fingers rubbing at the thing as if they were long-lost friends who'd been apart for far too long.

"Certainly not that kind of trouble," Rhea said; her pretty eyes peeking out beneath her hood and holding warily on Solaire's sword. "It's just, Solaire, you have been asleep for quite some time, and, well, I've watched over you. You have recovered, which is a good thing, but we... well, Abby, may have found something rather interesting while you were indisposed."

"Oh?" He looked to Abby.

The girl stared up at him, and he found a quiet confidence housed within her eyes as she spoke, "Solaire, I think you are the son of Gwyn."

They talked then, and by the time they'd stopped talking, the Sun had crawled to its peak; washing away some of the darkness of the storm as it hung vigilantly overhead. Solaire, halfway through the conversation, had seated himself on the steps, and it was there he sat still when they had finished. He watched a puddle near the church entrance. Its surface blossomed intermittently as raindrops crashed upon it. He thought it was a nice thing to look at, and imagined his mind had blossomed similarly as they'd relayed their 'discoveries' upon it. He felt strangely at peace.

"A God?" He spoke into the lull of silence that had fallen over the party. Each of them looked to him. A few nodded. "You think me a God, or, at least the son of one?"

"I thought it was madness myself when the girl first started babbling on about it," Tarkus said. "No offense, Abby, but it wasn't the easiest concept to swallow. But all the information is there, Solaire. At this point... I almost would think it mad if you weren't the son of Gwyn."

Son of Gwyn, Solaire thought. The words sounded just as funny and foreign in his head as they did from Tarkus' mouth. "It... simply cannot be. I thank you all for believing that I could be so important and powerful, but... friends, it cannot be. I am but a man. Flesh and blood. I'm no better than any of you."

"Solaire," Domhnall began, "don't let your own humility blind you. Abby's findings are too specific to be ignored. And your 'gift' that Tarkus speaks of. This lightning miracle that forms from your very flesh. You can't possibly explain that away as 'luck', can you? It is the power of a God. Gwyn's power, to be precise. The Lord of Sunlight used it to wage war against the dragons in man's dawning age."

"Who gave you the nickname 'Knight of Sunlight' anyway?" Rickert questioned. "Don't s'ppose that's just a coincidence do ya?"

"You said you don't remember your childhood," Abby added. "Perhaps it's because your parents, or Gwyn, didn't want you to remember."

"Why would they do that?" Solaire asked. "It doesn't make sense. Why hide my lineage from me? What good could that possibly serve anyone? Rob me of a family? Of a brother? Of a sister? Of... of a whole part of my life?" He shook his head. "No one would do that to a child. It cannot be."

"Then how come it is?" Abby asked.

Solaire raised his hand. "Abby, please. I do not wish to speak any further on this subject. I am a man of flesh and blood, the same as the rest of you. I will bleed with you. I will fight with you. I will die with you. But I will not accept this role of 'Son of Gwyn'. When we make our way to the Kiln... if you all still wish it, I will attempt to slay the Lord of Cinder and light the bonfire myself. I only pray that you do not be disappointed when I perish as a man and not strive as a God."

"Those Darkwraiths wanted your head, Solaire," Tarkus said.

"So they did. And they will have plenty of opportunities to come for it again. I'm going with you back to Anor Londo on the morrow to retrieve the Lordvessel."

"But the Darkwraiths-"

"If those wretched things are truly hunting me," Solaire began, "than I am endangering the lives of every man, woman, and child in this church by remaining here. That I cannot live with. If the things come upon us... I will lead them astray so that the rest of you may continue on for the

Lordvessel. I do not plan to be taken unaware again, however, and the next time we cross paths... they shall be the ones with something to fear. Praise the Sun, friends. Someday soon, it will shine brightly upon all of us."

He saw a longing look on each of their faces, one that asked for the conversation to go on a bit longer, perhaps so that they might do a better job convincing him of his 'Godship', but Solaire had no more interest pursuing that bit of nonsense, and so he bowed, turned, and strode off.

-o-o-o-

At dinner that night, he was quiet. When conversation turned his way, he was amicable enough with whomever was doing the conversing, but when he found moments of respite, his thoughts turned again and again to the one, lingering, memory he had of his childhood. Bright light, golden light, wrapping me in its embrace, warming me, holding me, hushing the child I'd been, guiding me to become the man I one day would be. He drank the last bit of his stew. It had gone cold, and at the bottom, a few loose peas rolled about. They looked like lost children. And what sort of God would abandon his child anyway? Solaire thought, and made sure to drink down every last bit of the meal.

-o-o-o-

His dreams that night were haunted by shadows, and when he woke to darkness, he could not recall them for the life of him. He clambered out of bed, dressed, and made his way to the balcony. Outside, the Sun was still hidden beneath the eastern horizon; the moon peeking between patches of black clouds above. Solaire breathed the night air. It was damp and cold and stale, but it was sweet on his tongue all the same. Son of Gwyn. The title was ridiculous, but then, so was a child with no family or memory.

He thought of the lifeless face of Gwyndolin, laying sprawled out on the stone top of Anor Londo's great wall the day the hollow army was defeated. Benjamin had killed the man, or woman, or whatever it was. Solaire didn't think he or she looked anything like himself. He lifted his gaze to the distant tops of Anor Londo in the North. Gwyn's other child, Gwynevere, resided there, though the rumors said she was but an illusion cast by her brother and his Darkmoon sorceries below the city. If Abby was right... the illusion was one of his 'sister'. If it even remains now that the Dark Sun has fallen, that is, he thought.

Solaire lifted his hands before him to bathe beneath the moonlight. He didn't think they looked like anything more than a man's hands; an old knight's war-mitts that had wrapped around steel more often in their life than a woman's waist, that had brought more death than comfort, that had known combat and war and a half-dozen ways to twist just right and kill a man... but had never reached out and grazed a mother's face or shaken a

father's hand. They weren't God's hands: only an old killer's. Son of Gwyn, he mused with a shake of his head. If my father was Gwyn, my mother must've been Nito, for I carry as much death in me as I do life.

With that thought left to linger and perturb in the shadowed corners of his mind, Solaire sighed, looked once more to the East, and set about getting ready for the long journey ahead.

-o-o-o-

They left at dawn. A party of four: Tarkus, Rhea, Rickert, and himself. They dressed in heavy, woolen, cloaks; hooded to shield from the ever- persistent rains, and when Solaire turned back to glimpse the church as it faded into the horizon behind them-Abby, Domhnall, Andre, and Sieglinde gathered upon the church steps to see them off-he had the distinct feeling that he would never see the place or the people again.

Son of Gwyn, he thought. If by some mad chance there is truth in that... then grant me the strength of a God so that I may protect those left in this dark world of ours. Give me the strength to see our mission to completion and without casualty. Give me the strength to succeed where others have failed, to fill the Lordvessel, to reach the kiln, to finish off the old man below who withers as Lordran withers with him. Give me the strength to save this world.

Rickert nudged his side, pulling Solaire's attention back to the path ahead. He squinted, his vision adjusting. He hadn't noticed, but he'd been staring at the Sun as he thought. Solaire laughed. Of course he had. That was the only God he believed in. And that was the God that would gift him the strength he required. As it always had.

...as it always would.  
They made for the city of Anor Londo.

Chapter 49

The longer she looked upon the tunnel twisting into the mountainside, the less the thing resembled a tunnel at all. It was a gnarled and shadowed path-an old path-and the curve deeper within hooked around to disappear into darkness. It is an eye, Quelana thought, an eye that has burrowed up from Izalith itself to watch me. An eye that is waiting for me. A cold wind breezed forward through the Valley of the Drakes and sent her cloak billowing out before her. The grass beneath her feet was dampened by rainfall. The air had a musty, used, scent to it. Still, Quelana stood her ground; ground that, despite the conditions, was infinitely more appealing to her than that which awaited inside the tunnel.

Lautrec was leaned up against the rocky wall of the cave's entrance, drumming his fingers impatiently atop his golden shoulder-mantles. He swiped rain-soaked hair from his face and narrowed his grey eyes upon her. "You know witch, it's usually just one foot forward, then the next. Walking, admittedly, can be a tricky thing, but you seemed to have a fairly good grasp of it before, so-"

"Stop."

Lautrec sighed. He pushed off the wall, crossed the short gap between them, and extended his hand to her. "It's only a tunnel."

"A tunnel that leads to Blighttown," she corrected him, "and to Izalith and to..." An ice-encased witch, deformed by the chaos, the severed head of Kirk in her arms, reaching forth, reaching with hands that had become claws and that wanted nothing more than to return Izalith's lost daughter to the grave she deserved. A chill took her spine, and Quelana pulled a breath to stave it away.

Lautrec, perhaps realizing she wasn't going to take his hand, turned back to the cave's entrance and looked it over. "You know, the irony here is that the last time you and I were in this very spot, I was trying to console you because you were afraid of leaving Blighttown. Do you remember?"

She remembered. She could still recall the fear; fear of a world she did not know or understand; fear of an open sky watching over her instead of the tree branches and clouds and bridges that made up Blighttown's roof; fear of the man who had bound her in ropes and taken her captive from the only home she'd ever known. The man I now return with, Quelana thought, studying Lautrec as he studied the cave. "I am not brave. I've said as much many times."

Lautrec turned to her, his brow raised. "Not brave? I watched you burn down an army of hollows without so much as batting an eyelash."

"That was different. I was commanding the flames then. When I am in

combat, I am one with the fire-a flame myself-and a strong flame... a strong flame does not waver."

"A flame then... and what are you now, witch?"

Quelana stared into the darkness of the tunnel before them; flashes of deformed creatures of pure ice dancing in her mind's eye. "...a child. A child returning to her home. A child who is afraid and not nearly as strong as she need be."

Lautrec held her eyes. He reached forward and, this time, didn't bother waiting for her to take his hand. He took her's instead. "Then let me be your strength," he said, and Quelana watched as that same hungry expression took his face as it had the night he'd drunkenly tried kissing her in the Parish streets.

She turned away from those piercing, grey, things that bore into her and took a step towards the tunnel; Lautrec's 'desires' were the last thing she was concerned about at the moment. She slipped her hand out of his and pulled her cloak tighter to her body. She took another step and the sky overhead disappeared; replaced by the rocky roof (hand) of the tunnel above. Another step and she could hear water sloshing about further on. Another and she smelled smoke; perhaps the last vestige of Izalith's mighty fires that had once burned so brilliantly and now, as Domhnall had told her, were nothing but lakes of ice and fading trails of dissipated vapor.

Another step and her legs turned to rubber, threatening to spill her to the ground if she refused to turn back and flee. She reached behind her and took Lautrec's hand again, pulling the man to her side and tucking her arm beneath his own for support. His armor was hard and cold, as cold as the man's eyes who wore it, but the rubber fled her legs at once and her nerves stilled.

Lautrec reached for her chin. "Are you alright, witch?"

She pulled her head away. "Fine. I'm ready now. Let's go."

And so they went. The tunnel was dark and narrow but-thankfully-brief. They passed through it without disturbance, and Quelana found each of her footsteps came more easily than the last. When the path opened to the deep, twisting, chasm of Blighttown, their feet moved from dirt to the warped wooden platforms overlooking the swamps below. Quelana pulled Lautrec nearer to her as she leaned out to steal a glance at her former home.

The sight, at once, sent a wash of relief over her. The swamps themselves had changed-higher and more diluted from the relentless rains beating down on them-but the place looked otherwise the same. She could see the massive stone pillars, the ones she had come to think 'held up the

world' around them, and the islands of brown earth they protruded from. Further on, the hollowed trunk of Lordran's mighty 'Great Hollow' tree poked out of the swamps around it like a wooden finger, taking aim at the Gods themselves. Littering the grounds were constructs of poles and planks, though the raised swamps had began overtaking their bases. At the far end, the mighty stone wall of the Undead Burg raced down to them, planting itself in the green and brown waters that splashed at their feet.

"Home sweet home?" Lautrec questioned. He'd stepped near to the edge himself and was sweeping his eyes across the lands awaiting them.

"Something like that." Quelana's gaze drifted across the swamps to the next tunnel (eye) they would need traverse to reach Izalith. It was a small thing, burrowed into a wall of spiderweb that rose in a mound from the waters below it. There was wind coming from within, she could see it sending loose strands of web into a dance at the tunnel's mouth, and Quelana knewthat when they stood before it, it would be as cold as ice on their flesh. Beyond: Izalith.

Lautrec kicked at a rock. It rolled the edge and plummeted down the maddening drop to Blighttown, landing in the murky waters with a splash. He looked the old path of warped wood they stood upon up and down. "I hope this things holds. I've already been thrown from a bridge. It wasn't pleasant. That drop, however... that is one I won't crawl back from."

"No," she agreed, staving the thought of plummeting as the rock had from her thoughts, lest they return the rubber to her legs. "Let us make haste and be rid of this danger then."

They crossed walkways and descended ladders, shuffled past congested platforms and plodded down creaking ramps, and soon enough, they were upon the great wooden wheel that acted as a sort of 'lift' between Blighttown and the rest of the world. On this day, however, it was doing no such lifting: the wheel had ceased to spin. A broken cycle, Quelana thought, flicking her eyes to Lautrec's and wondering if he'd had the same thought.

A queer expression rose on the knight's face. He raised a hand to his brow, closed his eyes, and grimaced. A moment later, he lowered to a knee, leaned out over the platform's edge, and sent his vomit down to mix with the rest of the bile in the swamps below. Quelana-to her own surprise-was beside him in a flash, taking hold of his arm in case his mind spun and he lost his footing. "What's wrong?"

He groaned, dabbed at his chin, and turned her way. "My body is wondering where all the booze is. That will happen when your diet has been three steady courses of wineskins with a smattering of shit-stew in between for two weeks. I-" His eyes narrowed over her shoulder, his hand reached for the hilt of his shotel, he rose.

Quelana had heard it too. Noise at their rear. She stood herself and spun; a flame cooking in her upturned palm almost of its own accord.

The path behind them was a maze of wooden ladders and wooden platforms and wooden ramps: nothing else. They listened, but only an oppressive silence awaited.

"Darkwraith, perhaps?"

Quelana shook her head. "No. The air would have changed. Thickened. It had to have been something else."

"Or nothing at all."

She turned to him. "You don't believe that."

Lautrec pulled his gaze from the path they'd traveled, briefly held upon her, and moved to the broken lift. "I believe," he began, "that I'd rather not get into a battle with this narrow, creaking, walkway underfoot. Doubly so with my stomach on protest for 'more wine'. I believe we need to find a way to the swamps. I believe we should do that quickly."

Quelana cast one last sweeping glance on the platforms at their rear before turning and joining the knight again. "There is no other way down. At least not any way that we can easily reach. There is a path further ahead that spirals down from the sewers beneath the Burg, but... we'd lose at least a day just backtracking to reach it."

"Take my hand," Lautrec said. When his request was met with Quelana's shrewd look, he sighed. "Calm yourself, witch. I only need your support for a moment."

Hesitantly, she took hold of him. At once, Lautrec leaned out over the edge of the platform. Quelana stumbled forward a step, surprised by his weight's sudden shift in balance. She planted her feet and watched as the man reached out and tugged at the lift's motionless platform; it rested just over their heads. The whole thing groaned beneath his gauntlet-clad hand, sounding not entirely unlike the blacksmith, Andre, stretching his back. Lautrec leaned closer, Quelana straining to keep his weight centered, and yanked at it again. The platform, after a bit of coaxing on Lautrec's part, began sinking to their level. The knight got his elbow atop it, leaned out even further, and shoved it down.

"Lautrec," Quelana called, wrestling with his arm. "Are you mad!?"

He pushed off the lift's platform once it was leveled with the one beneath their feet and returned to her side. "We can take it down. Our weight will be more than enough to get it moving. Coming back up? Not as easy. Suppose that's where your 'sewer' passage further on will come into play."

Quelana eyed the lift platform warily. It was an old and tattered thing and

had barely the room to house the two of them. "This is a foolish idea."

"Agreed. I prefer a good foolish idea to a non-existent wise one, though." Behind them, and further above, perhaps near the tunnel they'd arrived in, something clinked. Lautrec cast a glare in the sound's direction. "Unless, of course, you prefer a straight fight here and now. Thinking on it... I don't care for the idea of being followed." His hand moved to his hilt-

-and Quelana stopped it. "Don't be a fool. You were right before. This is poor footing for a fight." She looked to the platform, to the edge, to the drop, to the swamps below that would shatter their bones and swallow them up should they fall. "I just hope you're right."

"I usually am," he said, tightened his grip on her hand, and stepped out to the platform.

Quelana was quick to hop the gap after him, and the very moment both their weight settled upon the platform, it began creeping downwards; the wheel lurching and turning and groaning as it came back to life. After a moment, their speed picked up, the wheel catching its bearings and their combined weight driving the thing harder and harder as they descended. By the time Quelana could peek out and see the next walkway awaiting them, the wind was rushing up to rip her hood free and send her hair into a dance. Overhead, the wheel creaked, some hidden contraption snapped, and they began to plummet at the same speed the rock Lautrec had kicked had.

Lautrec's arms wrapped her body and his weight drove into her back. The two of them went tumbling forward from the lift to crash to the lower platform below. Lautrec spun them in the brief moment before they collided, and Quelana wound up landing atop him, wincing as the wind was thrust from her stomach, and rolling off to lay beside him. She turned, looking back (half-expecting the wheel to have come alive and be driving down after them) and watched as the lift spun, started up the other side, and died a quarter of the way. It rolled back, lurched once more, and came to a halt.

Lautrec was already on his feet. He reached for her and pulled her up beside him. "Not so bad, hm?" Quelana could not answer; her wind was still returning to her. Lautrec eyed the broken lift up and slowly nodded his head. "Burn it."

"Burn it?" Quelana echoed when she felt able.

"It is of no use to us. Not anymore. And if there is something on our trail... let it burn along with the old thing."

Quelana craned her neck back. The platforms and walkways overhead clung to the wall beside them, held up by poles and bits of structure poking out from the rocks. The lift was near enough to them to almost

touch. He's right, she realized, lifting her arm to let her robes fall to her elbow and angling her palm towards the lift. She commanded a stream of flame to reach forth and wrap the wheel's belly. The wood darkened, cracked, and came alight with fire shortly after. She quelled her flame and stepped back, watching as the fire rose higher and higher, hungrily engulfing every last bit of wood it could set its teeth upon. Smoke clouded the air: giant, billowing, black towers that streaked up alongside the fire to bury the upper platforms in a shroud of darkness. A chunk of wood burned loose and crashed down not three feet from where they stood.

"Come on," Lautrec said, taking her by the elbow. He guided them back to the ramp that lowered into Blighttown's swamps, halting before the water reached up and wrapped their ankles. "Gods," he muttered, his eyes aglow with reflected fire as he gazed up the lift. "It's all going up so fast."

Quelana turned back to see the fire had decimated the lower half of the lift and was working its way across to the platforms they'd traversed, baking the bottoms a dark black before spreading their red death to the wood and sending fresh tendrils of smoke to blot the sky. "If there was someone following us... they follow no longer. That much is for certain." Another massive chunk of the wheel cracked loose and sailed to the swamps below, landing with a splash.

"There's a trail here," Lautrec began,"wrapping around the swamps. I know you are likely immune from any sickness these murky waters might have waiting to unleash upon us, but I, unfortunately, am not. I can't dwell in them for long."

Quelana pried her eyes from the fire to trace the path Lautrec was pointing out. She shook her head. "No. Here. There are others ways. Hidden ways. This is my home. If there is one place in Lordran where I should be the guide, it is here."

Lautrec stared at her. Slowly, he gave his acquiescence. "Fair enough, witch. Lead on."

She did. There was a path near to Blighttown's entrance that twisted and weaved in and out of the rock walls themselves. Quelana led them through it, keeping a flame at her fingertip to light the way, and soon enough, she had wrapped them around and beneath the burning lift and out near her pillar. My pillar, Quelana mused. My home. The sight brought her comfort, and she was quick to lay her bare feet into the waters; kicking and trudging her way across the gap. When she reached land, the pillar of stone looming over her protectively, at once she lowered to her knees and laid her palms on the dirt. It was good dirt. It was dirt where she had met and trained and tutored many pupils; young, healthy, warriors and sorcerers and clerics that she'd shared the knowledge of her mother's gifts with. Faces flashed before her mind's eye then, but they came and went so quickly, she could not put detail to them.

Only Salaman's lingered, as it always did, comely and brave and wise.

"You were quite the wary thing when I first came upon you here, witch," Lautrec said, stepping from the swamps and quickly lowering to run a bit of cloth against his boots and greaves, cleansing them from the poisons that would seep through and plague his flesh. "Gods... that was a long time ago now, wasn't it? And here we are again. That's the thing about cycles, I suppose... they always come back around."

"Here we are," Quelana agreed, turning to cast a glare upon the man from within her hood. "Where you and your 'friend' kidnapped me. Where you took me from my home, bound me, gagged me, and held me as your prisoner."

Lautrec sighed. "Well... I was going to leave that particular bit out of the story, but... yes, I suppose that too."

"I haven't forgotten it. You shouldn't either."

"Was it really so terrible, witch? Would you really have preferred to have been down here, alone and useless, while the battle for Lordran's future waged above?" Lautrec rose and crossed to her. "It was you who guided Abby in the early outings of this mad adventure of ours, not I. And it was your flames that brought the most death to the hollows when they laid siege upon the Archives, not my skills. If I had never come and taken you... witch, Lordran might already have gone to darkness."

"Don't try convincing me you were doing me a 'favor' when you stole me away from here," Quelana said. "Your intentions, regardless of how things worked out, were of greed. You wished only for my powers to act as your shield."

Lautrec held her eyes, perhaps thinking of some rebuttal. None, apparently, surfaced, for the knight simply shook his head and walked to the opposite side of the pillar. He gazed upwards as the fires blazed on, searing and destroying the path behind them. Leaving only the path ahead, Quelana thought, casting a glance towards that mound of spiderweb awaiting them, and to the tunnel (eye) that peeked out from its top. Loose strands of web were waving at her, and Quelana swore she could feel the coldness of the tunnel's wind, running its icy fingers along her arms and throat, inviting her to step closer. She shivered.

"Afraid?" Lautrec asked.

She turned to see him staring at her. "You know I am. I haven't made attempts to hide my fear." She narrowed her eyes on his. "I wonder, though, what are you afraid of, Lautrec? I learned a long time ago that beneath even the bravest of men's armor, there is a little boy: quivering and afraid. Tell me, what does yours fear?"

"The scared boy in me was killed by the angry one a long time ago." He

shrugged. "Spend enough time under one emotion's spell, the others tend to drift away."

"You expect me to believe you are man without fear?" "Well, I fear another of Andre's stews as my next meal."

Quelana shook her head. "You avoid any question you don't have some witty retort for with a jest. ...a shame."

"Oh, what do you care anyway, witch?" Lautrec snapped. "I'm just the cold- hearted kidnapper that destroyed your precious little swamp-life down here. Isn't that right."

"That's not what I said."

"No, because you don't speak directly. I do. Your meaning is always buried away in some metaphor or riddle."

Quelana frowned. "What does that even mean?"

Lautrec stepped before her and kneeled so they were on eye-level. She lifted her hand instinctively, but he took it by the wrist. His grip on her was firm, but not rough. She raised her eyes to his and he nodded. "I could be in the church, drowning in a wineskin right now instead of down here in a damned swamp, sick, cold, tired, and listening to you berate me. But I'm not. I'm here, aren't I? Why, witch? Why would I do such a thing?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but found no answer worth giving.

"I'm here for you," he went on. "I'm here because you told me to sober up and get my act together if I was to accompany you. I did. I even tried speaking with my sister, as poorly as it went, I tried." An anger flared up in his eyes but Lautrec sighed and it died away at once. "I'm not quite old enough to be an old man, witch, but I'm old enough that the best of my years are behind me. My purpose was to seek and obtain vengeance on the young woman who shattered my life as a boy. I don't have that anymore. I have this," he widened his arms, gesturing to Blighttown. "I have this mad adventure of ours, and when it's completed? I have nothing. You want to know what I want? You want to know what I fear, witch? I fear that at the end of this whole thing, if the cycle is broken, if Lordran is saved, if the two of us and Abby and Solaire and every damned other person left alive in this mad world of ours have a Lordran left to live in? ...I fear I won't want to."

She looked between the man's grey eyes, and for the first time, found something besides anger or drunken lust. She found a tinge of sadness. "And what exactly do you want me to do about that, Lautrec?"

A quiet moment passed between them. "...nothing, witch." He released her and stood. "Nothing at all." He nodded the way forward. "I've had

enough of these damned swamps. Let's get on with this."

His hand lowered to her. Hesitantly, she took it and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. He was close to her then, and when her eyes found his own, she thought back on the first day he'd come to her. You are quite beautiful, witch, he'd said, holding her to his chest. Quite beautiful indeed. That man was gone, though, and a man who she was realizing she knew nothing about had taken his place. A man who did not look entirely unlike Salaman had... before the madness took him.

Lautrec shouldered past her, making for the mound of spiderweb.

"Lautrec," she called to him, halting the knight and pulling his gaze back to her. "You do have my gratitude for coming with me. I... I told myself I was brave enough to make this journey alone, but... it was a lie. I'm thankful you are here with me. Truly." Tell him what he wants to hear, a voice commanded. Tell him you think him handsome and brave and that if you both live through this... you might one day think of him as something more. She held her tongue, though. She'd been around enough men who shared Lautrec's desires to know that once they received what they wanted, their use dried up fast. And she still needed him. Needed the warrior, not... whatever he might become if she was in his arms, and so, she simply forced a smile, nodded, and joined beside him.

They crossed the short gap between the pillar and the spiderweb mound, Lautrec stopping briefly once again to clean his greaves of swamp water as Quelana pressed her feet into the soft webbing beneath them. A deception, she thought. The web is soft and inviting, but it is a spider's trap, and a misplaced footstep will have the both of us eaten alive where we're going. She looked to the hole (eye) above. A smattering of dark tree branches were poking up around the path leading there, sending gnarled and dried wood out like the hands of the damned, reaching up from Izalith itself to pull any passerby within. Fear stirred in the pit of her stomach, and Quelana had to turn from the thing to quell it.

Lautrec's arm found her's, hooked beneath it, and pulled. She let him lead her, and soon enough, they stood before the entrance to her sister, Quelaag's, domain. The wind coming from within was not as icy as she'd imagined it, but it was cold enough, and Quelana wrapped her cloak as tight as she could do her body. She glanced back to the storm-ridden skies that could be glimpsed above. "Once we enter here... there will be no sky over our heads until the Lord Soul shard is collected and we return."

Lautrec shrugged. "I won't miss that storm and its endless rains, that's for sure."

Quelana nodded. "I... I only hope Abby and the rest are safe. It worries me that we haven't encountered any Darkwraiths. What could they possibly be doing if they truly roam Lordran?"

"That I do not know, witch," Lautrec said. "And Abby will be fine. She's smart enough to protect herself and stay clear of the dumb and dangerous. Patches, in particular. Hmm... I regret not killing that man before we left now that I think of it. Gods know I owe him as much."

The faces of those who they'd left at the Parish flashed before her, and one in particular landed and held in Quelana's thoughts. "What did you give Anastacia before we left?"

"Was a piece of paper, I believe."

"Lautrec..."

"Words, witch," he said. "Nothing more. Nothing less. Words... not for the woman who robbed me of the best years of my life, but for the girl I skipped stones with as a child. That girl... she deserved them."

Though he hadn't given her a direct answer, Quelana did not press him further on the matter. In truth, she was surprised he'd given her as much as he had. She faced the tunnel (eye) and pulled a breath to steady her nerves. The rubber was threatening to enter her legs again; her arms trembling like twigs caught in wind beneath her robes. Lautrec's hand found her's and squeezed, and she found herself looking upon him with profound gratitude once again.. "...thank you."

He nodded.

They entered, Quelana taking one last glimpse towards the little pillar that had been her home before it vanished behind the web-covered walls entirely. The path was sloped and narrow and suffocating, and more than once, Quelana found herself having to take a deep breath to remind her lungs they could breath at all. The ground was sticky, pulling at her feet as she walked, as if to hold in her place, but Lautrec's pace held strong; if it hadn't the web underfoot might've succeeded in planting her. The tunnel widened, narrowed, and widened again, before twisting around and spilling out to a massive chamber.

Quelana pulled herself tighter to Lautrec as she drank in the sight. The clearing was enormous, with curved walls that apexed at a rounded point fifty feet high in the room's center. Everywhere she looked, webbing littered her vision. The walls-which were practically formed from the webbing-and ground were seared black here and there, as if some intense flame had scorched them, and at the far end of the chamber, a twist of stone stairs led towards a crumbling tower wedged between webbing and wall.

"This is where my pupils said my sister resided," Quelana whispered. "Quelaag, that is. They said... she was a half-witch, half-spider monstrosity."

"You never saw her for yourself?"

"No," Quelana admitted. "I... I was too afraid to come see."

"Well, there's nothing here. Perhaps they lied."

"No... I heard her. From time to time. A battlecry or a roar when a Chosen would go to face her, or... a scream in the night. Her life must have been wracked with pain and suffering. As my own would've been had I not fled. Had I not been so cowardly."

"'Fled' sounds like 'survived' to me," Lautrec told her. "And no one should be ashamed of surviving."

There were tears in her eyes then, though Quelana could not be sure if they were for herself or for her sister. She swiped them away quickly, fearing they might turn to ice on her cheek. "I don't want to stay in here any longer," she croaked.

"No. Neither do I, witch."

They crossed the chamber-Quelana using one hand to wrap her robes to her chest so tightly, they were nearly choking off her air supply, and her free arm to pin herself against Lautrec's side, as if she might be flown away at any moment without him-and climbed the stairs at the other end.

They led to the interior of a rounded tower: webbing on the walls; a gaping hole in the center of the room's floor. There were arched windows on the far side, but they were webbed up and collapsed, hiding any view Quelana could hope to steal of the Demon Ruins beyond.

Lautrec made to release her and step forth to peak into the floor's hole, but Quelana refused to let go of him. She'd never been this close to home since fleeing it-though Izalith was still a bit far away-and she needed the knight beside her more then than ever. When he turned on her, she pulled a breath, tightened her hands into fists, and made her feet follow him.

The hole, it turned out, didn't lead to much. Only an identical room to the one they were in. Lautrec nodded to a passage, and beneath it, they found a twist of steps circling down the tower's inner wall. Below, another tunnel (eye) peeked out, webbed and dark and waiting. The once-lava- filled lands of the Demon Ruins, Quelana knew, awaited beyond. Lautrec was leading them towards it when Quelana saw something that caused her feet to halt and she jerked at the knight's arm.

"What is it?"

"Look," she whispered, nodding. "Ice."

There, around the tunnel's rim, a thin layer of cracked ice had taken hold. It was pale and blue and rigid, but it was there. "It's true, then," Quelana said. "Izalith and the lands leading within are pure ice now. ...my home

has frozen over."

"Does it change anything?" Lautrec asked.

She considered his words. "...no. I suppose it doesn't."

He nodded. "Then let us continue. We can-" His eyes looked her over. "Witch, you're shivering."

Quelana hand't even noticed, but he was right. Her arms trembled, her legs shook, and the only way to keep her hands still was to ball them into fists again. It's the ice, she thought. The ice that has formed up around your sister's deformed bodies further on. The ice that wants to burrow between your lips and freeze your inner flame forever.

"We've traveled all day," Lautrec said. "We can afford a rest." His eyes moved over her shoulder. "Look. There is another tunnel."

She turned and found it. There was no ice on its rim. That was a good thing-a comforting thing-and Quelana found herself pulling Lautrec towards it almost immediately. Within was a long hall that ended in a slab of stone that may have once been another passage, but had long-since been sealed over. At the halfway point, a dead bonfire resided beside a carved-out section of wall, thick with webbing and debris.

"They said my other sister resided somewhere before the Demon Ruins," Quelana said. "I wonder, perhaps, if this is that spot. Quelaan... 'The Fair Lady' they called her." I was a Chaos Servant to your sister, Kirk's words from the day the Archives' had fallen rang in her head. The last soul she'd sent me to capture was yours, witch! She wanted you alive. She pictured the vile man's head cradled in Quelaan's icy arm, laughing and laughing and laughing from its blood-soaked, plump, lips.

"It's as good a place as any to make camp for the night," Lautrec said- thankfully-intruding on her thoughts and driving them away. "Half our work is already done." He nodded to the bonfire.

Quelana commanded a lick of flame to ignite it at once. The kindling of fire and bone went up at once, driving away her trembling almost instantly. Quelana pulled Lautrec near and kneeled before the flames, letting their warmth wash her face and cleanse her soul. Lautrec sat beside her, holding his hands to the fire and rubbing them against one another.

They sat there in silence for awhile, Quelana listening to the bonfire's kindling crackling and searing. It was Lautrec who broke the quiet. "If we rest here now... will you have the courage on the morrow to enter the Ruins? Even if-"

"Even if they are pure ice, I will enter them," Quelana assured him. "We've come too far for my lack of courage to turn us back now."

He nodded. "I only hope that whatever stands between us and that soul shard... we have the strength to deal with it."

"Yes... as do I."

Lautrec prodded a piece of kindling deeper into the bonfire with the toe of his boot. "If we succeed... it's almost over, I guess. Abby or Ben or Solaire or whoever is going to light that damned fire in the Kiln will have a clear path if they were successful in retrieving the Lordvessel and the other shards."

"Yes," she agreed. "It's almost over." She turned to him, studying the lines and angles of his face as the fire's light flickered against them. "Do you worry, Lautrec?"

"Worry?"  
"That this 'cycle' of yours will just start anew."

He shrugged. "Abby seems to believe the trick to that particular puzzle is letting Solaire light the flames. It sounded reasonable enough."

"And if she's wrong?"

The knight stared into the flames; splashes of red dotting the grey of his eyes. "Then... I suppose I go back in my little cell in the Parish. You go back to your pillar in Blighttown. All of this," he looked to the walls, to the ceiling, "is erased. Worthless. Pointless. For nothing. And you and I... we are strangers once more."

"We're not strangers now?"

He looked to her. "No."

He is not Salaman, she thought, but does he have to be? Isn't it better that he is not? Do you wish to be alone forever? Even as Lordran fails around you and the end times loom like a dark curtain ready to fall: all alone. A part of her wanted to reach out to him then... but another, more rationale, part knew it would only serve to complicate things. And there was work yet to be done. "You... do truly have my thanks for being here with me, Lautrec."

He nodded, but the hungry look in his eyes told her it was not the words he'd wanted to hear.

"We should rest," she said curtly, avoiding his gaze. "The road to Izalith is long and dangerous and I don't intend to camp along it."

"Yeah..." He muttered, sighed, stood, and dug into the single pack they'd brought from the Parish to fish out a blanket. He laid it end to end beside the fire, seating himself on the far side as Quelana scooted onto the

opposite end. The knight pulled his chest plate loose with some work and tossed it aside before removing his gauntlets. Quelana watched him, but when his eyes found hers, she turned away and laid herself atop the blanket with her back to him. She listened as Lautrec finished his task and laid down himself.

Ask him to hold you, a voice commanded, but Quelana shook the thought loose, squeezed her eyes shut and focused on the warmth of the flames- the only embrace she truly needed to be at peace-and soon enough, she slept.

-o-o-o-

Sometime later, she woke with a hand over her mouth, a dagger at her throat, and a man's face hovering above her that was not Lautrec's, but Laurentius'.

And there was a look of madness burning in the pyromancer's eyes.

Chapter 50

"Abby, wake up."

The smell of smoke invaded her nose, burrowed through her head and chest, and took harvest in her lungs, setting her into a fit of coughing and gagging even before her eyes opened. When they did, they were stung so fiercely with a sharp, penetrating, heat, Abby had to squeeze them shut again at once. She groped in the dark for the dagger she'd been keeping at her bedside table; the one she and Domhnall had been practicing with so Abby could defend herself should Patches and Pharis hold true to the previous day's threats. Her fingers found the hilt, wrapped it, and she clambered up out of the mound of blankets, whipping the blade before her wildly in defense.

"Abby!" Domhnall's voice. Awake then, she recognized it at once and lowered the blade. "Come on, girl!"

She made her eyes open-commanded them-and what she saw in the blackness of her room was the vague silhouette of the Merchant of Zena, outlined against the doorway he stood in. Behind him: orange and red lights flickering against the walls, throwing dancing shadows all around, a foggy grey smoke laid so thickly in the hallway beyond, everything else looked to be swimming in a sea of darkness.

Abby pulled a breath, coughed, and rubbed fists into her eyes. "What's happening!?" There was a girl's panic in her voice, but that could not be helped: she was terrified.

"There's a fire. Aye siwmae. It's all going up in flames. Come now, Abby, before we do as well." His voice carried a tone of fear and haste and anxiety that was so foreign to his usual demeanor, she half-believed it was some trick. Then a woman's screamed rose into the church's rafters from beyond the hall. The sound got Abby moving at once.

She rushed-nearly tangling in her blankets and falling as she did-to the

doorway, stuck her feet in boots, and ripped a cloak from the knob beside the doorway. Domhnall's hand took her by the small of her back as she slipped her arms inside the cloth and squirmed her head up into the hood, and by the time her vision had returned, he'd led her into the hall.

The oppressively thick grip of smoke in the air was far more apparent outside the room, and Abby had to pull the cloak up over her mouth and nose to stave off another fit of coughs as she oriented herself. "What's happened, Domhnall!?"

"I don't know. Fire. We have to go now, Abby. Come."

She swiped her hand before her face twice, clearing the grasping arms of the smoke from taking hold of her. Domhnall was edging backwards, toward the church steps, and Abby had nearly sprinted after him when light at the opposite end of the hall caught her attention. She spun towards the attic.

"Abby! Come on!"

"What about Ben!?" Her reply came half-muffled beneath the cloak, but when she looked to Domhnall, she saw he'd understood.

"There's no time!"

From below, something cracked and crashed and a fresh chorus of screams filled the church's great hall, reverberating queerly off its high, domed, ceiling. Abby ignored the sounds. She shook her head. "I won't leave him! Not to burn! Not like that!"

A flash of fire rose up towards the ceiling, accompanied by more screams and more smoke and more chaos, and in its brief light, she saw the pleading look in her friend's eyes. Don't risk it, it begged.

"Give me the key," she shouted into the cloak and stuck her hand out.

Domhnall coughed, waved smoke from his face, and shook his head. He rushed back to her, hooked her under the arm, and began a sprint down the hall towards the attic. "This is madness!"

"Mercy," Abby corrected.

At the balcony that overlooked the main hall, Abby stole a peek below and saw an appropriate amount of chaos matching the sounds she'd been hearing. Fires blazed in ever inch of the church; searing, red, flames cooking the walls and structures that had been built, lashing out their burning tongues at everything around them, black flames engulfing all. A young boy was screaming his head off, cradling his knees and crying as he hid beneath a pew. A moment later, a woman-her face as red as the flames-rushed through, snatched him by the arm, and yanked so quickly, Abby was sure she'd dislocated the poor thing. A man shouted, but she

could not place from where. A crossbeam running the length of the hall snapped in defeat against the battle it had been waging with the flames and came crashing down to decimate two whole rows of pews. The drapery that was being used as makeshift 'walls' to separate bedding were all ablaze; the brunt of the smoke climbing up from the ruin in purple and red tendrils as the dyes that soaked them dissipated.

"Abby!": Dom's voice, pulling her attention back where it need be.

The two of them ducked into the small stairwell that spiraled up to Ben's cell. Abby snatched the key from Domhnall's hand and ascended them in a few, desperate, leaps. She reached the barred door, plugged the keyhole, and-

-saw that no one remained inside to be rescued. "He's gone!" Abby shouted back, perplexed.

"Then let us make haste, my girl, before this place comes down around us!"

Her eyes found a smattering of blood on the floor near Ben's cot. He killed himself, she realized. Killed himself to escape the fire. She let her fingers graze the bars as she turned, sending a silent prayer that she was right, and hurried back to Dom.

They fled the church then without a further word to one another. The upper hall was easy enough to travel, the stairs a bit more difficult because of all the smoke choking the path and seeping into their lungs, and the great hall was emptied; only the fires left to greet them in big, flickering, waves of their arms. Abby buried her face in the nook of her elbow, lifted it before her like a shield, and raced beside Domhnall out of the side passage.

Their feet had not hit the wet stone outside for longer than a few seconds before the whole church let out a bellowing groan. Abby spun, Domhnall taking her in his arms, and watched as the two main support pillars at the chapel's stairs cracked and went lopsided beneath the weight of the upper floor sinking down atop them. A gust of black smoke puffed from the church's windows and doorways, as if some Giant had pulled a drag off his pipe and exhaled it, and the glass shattered, the doors cracked back on their hinges, and a fresh tower of flame lifted up around the rooftops.

Abby coughed into her hand again and shook hair that had already began to soak beneath the storm's rains from her face. "Gods," she muttered, staring upon the flaming horror that the Parish church had become. Above, the sky was black and littered with diseased-looking clouds, and the flames reached their hands up to tickle at the cloud's bellies, as if in worship of the storm itself. The rain beat down on the fires, but it was a contest impossible to win: the church was burning to the ground and

there was nothing anyone or anything could do to stop that now.

All around them: sobbing. Abby swept her eyes across the Archives' refugees who now found themselves the church's refugees. There was only a small handful gathered, and for one, heart-shattering, moment, Abby thought, This is all that there is. Everyone else has perished. Then shouting from along the stone walkways that wrapped around to the church's front sounded, and Abby breathed relief.

"Come on," she said, raising her voice to the crowd to be heard over both the crackling wood and the roaring thunders. "Andre and the rest must be out front. Is everyone alright? Is there anyone missing?"

Each face she looked upon met her with the same despondent expression; the orange glow of the flames the only thing brining any color at all to their disparaged faces. Some wept; none spoke. Domhnall tugged at her arm, and she turned to see even the merchant's face was sullen beneath his mop of auburn hair. He tugged again and she fell in beside him, hooking arms. She gestured for the rest to follow. They did, though their movements were sluggish and listless; as if every last one of them had been stricken hollow.

The walkway led them up and around and down again, and when it ended, Domhnall and Abby stepped beneath an arched passage and out to the front of the church, where-Abby had correctly guessed-the majority of the survivors were gathered beneath the rains and the smoke and the storm. Beside them, the fire raged on, perhaps even more furiously than before.

It wasn't long before she spotted the source of the shouting, and when she had, her mouth fell agape.

It was Ben, only... it wasn't. At least, not as she was accustomed to seeing him. He was wearing the same jerkin and breeches over his dark clothing, but his skin was gone-turned to a coarse, blotchy, thing as thick as the leather of his jerkin-and his eyes were sunken back into his head, leaving his pupils with a soft tinge of red glow.

Ben was hollow.

He didn't consume humanity after he killed himself, Abby realized. And that is what he is without it. That is what I am without it. A monster. A hollowed, undead, monster. She held her hand before her and ran her fingers against one another, thankful for the flesh that wrapped them.

"Liar!" Ben screamed with such thick contempt oozing in the word, his voice cracked. "You are all LIARS!"

"Ben, please!" Sieglinde was on her knees beside the church steps. Cradled in her arms was Andre. There was blood in his mane of grey hair. "Andre needs help! A piece of ceiling fell upon him in there! I think his

lung is collapsed! He's too old to wait for aid! We need to-"

"No," Ben said. "No. The only thing that can't wait is this. I need to know the truth of it."

Abby shared a apprehensive look with Domhnall. She pulled closer together with him and joined in the growing circle around the stairs. The sobs there were just as thick as they'd been on the side of the church, and one woman in particular kept shrieking 'My little girl is gone!' from the rear of the pack. When Abby looked to the woman, she was pulling long, raven-colored, locks of hair from her head and her eyes bulged madly in their sockets. Abby saw Ben cast a dark look the woman's way, shake his head, and returned his gaze to Sieglinde and Andre. Beside him, Patches and Pharis stood guard at his flanks, armed with spear and bow. When Patches' eyes found Abby's, Abby found a queer, foreign, expression within them that was not so dissimilar from her and Domhnall's own apprehension. The bald man quickly turned from her.

"Shovels! Now!" Ben commanded.

When no one in the crowd stirred, indignation tightened every line of his face. He spun on Pharis (Abby noting the way even she flinched from him) and nodded. Pharis returned the nod, raised her bow, and nocked.

"I'm not asking," Ben shouted. "Someone fetch a few shovels and dig that grave up. Right now."

"He's not digging up my boy!" A woman shrieked from the crowd. Abby found the shrieker after a moment of searching. It was the boy who'd been murdered's mother. Thomas, Abby thought. The poor thing's name was Thomas.

"If she shouts again, put an arrow in her thigh," Ben told Pharis.

The woman's face contorted with rage and grief and hate, but two men were beside her in the crowd in an instant, running comforting hands along her arms and pleading with her to calm herself.

Ben opened his mouth, stopped, leaned towards the shadows, and nodded. "You all brought this upon yourselves for what you did to me. Now I want proof. You say I killed a child? I say you LIE! Dig that grave up and we'll see which of us has the truth of it. Dig it now!"

Abby squinted into the pool of shadow Ben had leaned towards. It took her eyes a moment, but she found him. She hadn't seen him before, but he was there all the same. Of course I didn't see him, she thought. The man only appears when he wants to appear.

It was Griggs. He was resting upon a walking staff, smiling his queer smile at Ben as Ben set his glare upon the crowd.

"Andre's dying, Ben! Please!" Sieglinde pleaded. "This is madness! If we waste time digging that grave, he might be gone by the time we-"

"Dig the grave quickly then," Ben said. "And he might yet have a chance."

Sieglinde's mouth fell agape. She stared up at Ben as if in disbelief it was even Ben at all.

"I was there!" Abby shouted from the crowd, pulling all eyes her way. "The day they buried Thomas? I was there, Ben! I offered to help, but the men wouldn't have it. I watched them wrap him and lower him and... bury him. They prayed right there on the steps you stand upon! What are you trying to accomplish with this madness besides bringing more grief to the poor child's mother!"

"Seize her," Ben commanded of Patches at once.

Patches hesitated only a moment before nodding, taking up his spear, and shoving through the crowd.

He was halfway to her when Domhnall's hand gently moved her aside, and the merchant stepped forward in his odd, Zena-styled, sword-stance; the crystal blade he wielded held before him as his hips shifted sideways and one of his legs pulled up towards his stomach. "You lay a hand on Abby and you lose the hand," he relayed as calmly as if he were relaying the weather.

Patches look flicked from Abby to Dom and back to Ben. Ben sneered. "Pharis, if she makes a run for it, fill her body with your arrows."

"Aye," the woman said.

"I'm not running anywhere," Abby told him. "And you're not digging up any child's body."

"I'm in charge now," Ben said.

Soft laughter escaped Domhnall's lips. "Those who must tell you they are in charge, never truly are."

Ben's look darkened, but he ignored the insult. "Dig the grave. If a young boy's corpse lies within... we can talk. If not..." Griggs, leaning forth from the shadows again, his lips moving in queer, intermittent, patterns. But he has no tongue, Abby thought. "Well," Ben continued, "if there is no body... there are sins to be answered for here tonight."

"You're a fool, boy," Domhnall said. "Abby tells it true. She watched the burial. And I? I helped dig it. You're pulling at a falsehood that does not exist."

"Then you all have nothing to hide. Dig the grave."

Thunder growled overhead; the rains picked up.

"My boy..." Thomas' mother weeped, burying her face in a man's shoulder to muffle her sobs. "Go on and dig him up then... dig him up so this bastard is appeased. It was a shallow grave... too shallow for a good boy like Tommy."

A silent standoff passed through the crowd. Ben, Patches, and Pharis on one side, just about everyone else on the other. Abby looked from person to person, but a creeping dread took her when she realized there was no fighters left among the numbers. Solaire and Tarkus and Rickert and Rhea... they had all left for Anor Londo that morning. Lautrec and Quelana for Izalith the day before. Lauretnius was missing. Andre was injured. It is only Domhnall and Sieglinde, she thought. The only two left to stand against the three of them.

Domhnall must have come to the realization as well, for after a long moment with only the smatterings of rain to fill the crowd's silence, he lowered his crystal sword. "Aye siwmae... dig the poor child's grave then."

The work was done quickly, despite the poor weather growing increasingly poorer overhead, turning the dirt to mud and the footing to a slippery mess. Three men, Domhnall amongst them, set upon the tiny grave they'd dug for Thomas off to the side of the church's front. A small stone plate that had been kissed by the boy's mother and engraved by Andre with the words, 'Thomas: A good son' was pulled down and the earth below was dug up. Ben watched: silent and sullen and waiting.

Behind them all, the church blazed into the night.

A clunk sounded when a shovel hit the wooden box that was the boy's makeshift coffin. Domhnall sent a reproachful shake of his head at Ben, tossed his shovel aside, and gathered with the other men on their knees to clear the dirt loose from the coffin and pull it up to prop against the grave itself. Ben stepped nearer.

"Open it," he commanded.  
"Thomas..." His mother weeped, turning away from the grave.

Domhnall sighed, wedged the tip of his sword between the coffin's lid and its base, and pried.

The lid came away. The coffin was empty.

"Liars!" Ben shouted, his chest heaving with rage. "I knew it! You are all liars!"

No, Abby thought, stepping closer and looking the empty coffin over. She had seen the boy's body herself. It was... impossible!

"THOMAS!" His mother wailed and darted for the grave with her arms swinging madly before her. "WHERE IS MY BOY!"

Two men took hold of her before she could leap into the hole to, perhaps, cradle the emptiness that awaited as if it would bring her son back to her.

"Someone moved him," Domhnall said. He wore the same look of confused disbelief that Abby imagined shewore herself. "He had to have been moved. I saw him! I buried him!"

"YOU LIE!" Ben screamed. "You are all liars! The lot of you! You conspired against me! You lied and you manipulated and you plotted and you did everything you could to hold me back. Why!? For her!?" He pointed at Abby. "Because of your love for her!? IS THAT IT!?"

"Calm down, son," Domhnall said, racing a placating hand towards Ben. "Someone is trying to set us up here."

"No..." Ben growled. "No, I won't listen to it anymore. I trust none of you. I should've known. None of you held love for me. Not ever. And you... you even conspired to take Pharis from me." He turned to the woman, reached for her arm, and pulled her close. "Tell them. Tell those who might not have been a part of this treachery what you heard."

The red-headed woman swallowed, nodded, and spoke. "Whispers. I heard whispers outside my door last night. Said they were... said they were getting ready to come in and get rid of me. Cut my throat while I slept and dump my body in the Darkroot Gardens."

"Cut your throat while you slept," Ben echoed, shaking his head incredulously. "All to keep me from power. All to hold me back. Liars and cravens and murderers. They walk among you all." He looked to Abby. "And there is their little princess: the royal manipulator herself."

Abby swallowed. She held her tongue.

The saddest smile she'd ever seen rose up Ben's hollowed cheeks. "You would have loved her had she succeeded. I'm not so blind as to not see that." He turned to the crowd. "But you will fear me, and in time... that fear will turn to love when you see what power and protection I can offer." Griggs leaned forth from the shadows again and moved his mouth around in a way that did not look like words. Ben appeared to be listening all the same. "Where is Anastacia of Astora? Bring her forth."

"No," Abby said, so quickly, it was practically a reflex.

"Silence," Ben commanded of her. "I'll deal with you in time. Bring me the firekeeper. Now."

But no one needed to bring Ben the firekeeper: Anastacia stepped forward herself. The crowd parted, and Lautrec's sister walked before the

steps in her dingy, grey, robes and boots. There was not fear on her face, but a quiet, stoic, confidence that was a far cry from the expression of anxiety and stress that Abby was used to seeing upon her. In Anastacia's hands, the firekeeper clutched onto something dearly, though Abby could not see what it was.

Griggs moved his lips at Ben again and Ben nodded. The man's eyes, Abby thought. There is something familiar about that queer man's eyes.

"Kneel, firekeeper," Ben commanded, his voice carrying loudly over the hushed crowd that swarmed the church steps, basking in the fire's warm glow.

Anastacia did so without hesitation; her look of bravery did not waver in the slightest.

"What are you doing?" Abby asked, stepping nearer.

"If she speaks again, put an arrow in her mouth," Ben told Pharis before turning his gaze back on Anastacia. "Lordran's last firekeeper. The last living soul that grants both Abby and myself immortality. Is there anyone here that would deny it?"

The crowd remained silent; rain smattered the steps; the blazing church crackled on.

Ben nodded. He raised a hand and peeled his glove from it. "The Chosen Undead is said to need rely on these... things," he nodded at Ana, "for our power. But I am no mere 'Chosen Undead'. I am the Dark Lord of Lordran. And I need no such power, for what I wield... is far beyond anything this world has ever known." He laid his bare hand on Anastacia's forehead. She stared up at him, her hands working in little circles around the item she clutched to her chest. Ben held the stare. "I told your brother I was going to do this in front of him. A shame I have to break that promise."

"Stop!" Abby pleaded.

Pharis loosed an arrow in her direction, and if it hadn't been for the dumb luck that she'd moved forward at that very moment, it just might've taken her in the mouth. She rushed the steps, pulling her dagger from within her cloak with the intention of driving it into Ben as she had driven the arrow shaft into Chester. She knew then that Ben was a bad man. A wicked man. And Abby knew-because of Chester-she could deal with wicked men if she had to. She knew just how.

She lifted the dagger, eyeing Ben's chest, and-

-Pharis swung the hilt of a sword out between them. It crashed into Abby's face and she felt something crack in the bridge of her nose. Black blankets covered her eyes and she fell back on her ass. Pain rippled through her entire face, driving up through her-likely broken now-nose and webbing

out in every direction around it. She brought a finger to her lip and swiped at the blood that leaked from both her nostrils. Her vision returned and she glared up at Ben and Pharis hovering over her.

"Stay on the ground where you belong," Ben said before turning back to Anastacia. "And watch what true power is."

Ben's arm tensed, and the fingers he'd clutched Anastacia's temple and forehead with tensed with it. Ben's chest heaved, his hollowed face contorted with anger, but for one, quiet, moment - nothing else happened. Ana stared up at him. Then bood began to trickle from her nose as it was trickling from Abby's. Her head began to shake. Her mouth fell open. Her eyes drifted upwards and then violently snapped back into her head, leaving only the white's to stare blindly forward. A sound escaped her lips, though whether it was a cry, a moan, a gasp, or a shout: Abby could not tell.

Ben released her.  
Anastacia fell to the rain-slicked stones of the church steps and went still.

Domhnall, Sieglinde, and everyone else gathered outside stared upon the fallen woman in disbelief.

When Anastacia did not move, and her chest did not rise and fall in breaths, the truth of it was clear enough: Lordran's last firekeeper was no more.

"How could you do that..." Abby croaked, the pain in her nose forgotten and the pain in her heart taking its place. "You... murdered her..."

"Now we are mortal," Ben said with a nod. "Now we die the same as anyone. But I will not die. I cannot die. I am the Chosen. I have been since the beginning. You all just witnessed what I can do. You witnessed my power. Now you know I hold no fear. I am to be your Lord, and I intend to be a merciful one. So I am now giving the rest of you the chance that I could not give Anastacia of Astora here. I am giving you the chance to kneel. And to serve. Serve your Lord... for I will lead you to salvation."

Domhnall unsheathed his crystal sword and made to climb out of the grave he'd dug. Patches beat him there, though, and drove the butt of his spear into the merchant's chest. Dom collapsed back into the grave, helpless to escape it.

"Benjamin..." Sieglinde whispered, staring in horror at Anastacia's corpse. "What have you done? What have you become?"

"Kneel, Sieg," Ben told her. "I know you were part of the treacheries and deceptions launched against me to imprison and destroy me, but I will show you mercy if you kneel and swear your allegiance to me. You were kind to me when I first came upon you. You were... like an older sister.

Show me your allegiance and one day we might rekindle that bond." "My allegiance? Ben... you mad, delusional, child... you are lost now."

Ben's lip quivered. "I am not a child. I am not a boy. I am your Lord. Swear your loyalty to me. Now."

Sieglinde's eyes moved from Ben to Andre. The blacksmith was heaving big, labored, breaths from his battered chest in her arms. She smiled a wistful, sad, smile at the man and ran her hand through his hair. She leaned forward and kissed his brow. When her eyes returned to Ben's, there was hatred in them. "Did you cause the fire?"

Ben's silence was his answer.

A tear rolled Sieglinde's cheek. "I only pray the Gods house some special hell reserved for you, Benjamin. You will never have my allegiance."

Ben nodded. One moment it looked as if he were going to cry, the next-

-he pulled the sword from Pharis' hand and drove it into Sieglinde's chest. The woman winced, squeezed her eyelids shut, and coughed a thin trail of blood onto her chin. Ben ripped the sword loose and she collapsed atop Andre.

This is a dream, Abby thought, though her voice sounded more like a plead in her head. This is some mad nightmare and you will wake up soon enough. Please wake up. Please.

Griggs leaned near to Ben. "The smith suffers," Ben said. "This is a mercy." He took a black bow from Pharis, nocked it, aimed, and loosed. The shaft buried into Andre's throat. A choked gurgle hissed from the man's lips and his eyes bulged. Then they closed and he was no more.

Please wake up, Abby pleaded. Please please please please.

"I can be merciful," Ben shouted. "Kneel! Kneeland you will receive my mercy!"

They kneeled then. The sight of it, of the men and woman and even the children lowering to plant their knees in puddles of rainwater as the blazing church raged on before them and cast their shadows in a mad dance further down the Parish street, their faces terrified and confused and a million other emotions that perhaps no person had ever felt before... the sight was enough to make Abby realize: this was no dream. The realization laid so thickly on her chest, she nearly collapsed from sorrow.

Patches and Pharis fished Domhnall out of the grave, taking up his arms in their own and holding him tightly between them. He glared forth at Ben, but when his gaze drifted to Abby, it softened.

'Please', she mouthed.  
He swallowed. He nodded. He understood. "Will you kneel, merchant?" Ben asked.

"Aye," Domhnall said, flicking his eyes to Abby's. 'So that you won't be alone' they told her, and Abby loved him for it. "I'll kneel, Ben. There doesn't need to be anymore killing tonight. We've all had enough sorrow and pain already."

"Then kneel."

Patches and Pharis released his arms and Domhnall did, bowing his head before Ben.

Griggs leaned forward and moved his mouth near Ben's ear.

"You have shown your loyalty," Ben said. "...but I cannot accept it, for you are a treacherous liar and a coward." He hoisted the sword.

Always keep a second dagger, Domhnall had told her the day they'd trained. She'd gone to him after Patches had sent his little 'warning' her way and one of the first things Domhnall had instructed her to do was to keep one dagger visible so that should her foes spot it, they will have confidence they've disarmed her. But the second dagger is the one they'll never see coming, he'd said. He was right. And Abby had listened.

She reached for her boot, slipped the dagger out from within, and leapt for Ben. There was no one there to stop her this time, and his throat was exposed.

For Anastacia and Sieglinde and Andre and everyone and everything you ever made suffer you bastard, Abby thought and jabbed the blade at Ben's neck.

Griggs thumped his walking cane on the ground and a blue light swelled at the tip near his hands. By the time Abby had seen it and realized the walking cane was not a walking cane at all, but a sorcerer's catalyst, it was too late. The spell blasted forth and thundered into her chest. Her wind left her in one, great, sweep, and she tumbled backwards to fall and slide on the rain-slicked stones beneath her. A fist of pure agony wrapped her in its grip, digging claws into every inch of her body till she let out a scream.

By the time she'd gotten her head up and her mind oriented, Domhnall was laying face-first on the ground, a pool of blood seeping out around him.

"NO!" Abby screamed, but when she made to stand, the pain wracked her body again and she collapsed, her face landing half in a puddle. She was

so out of it she tried breathing and got a lungful of rainwater instead.

A hand gripped the back of her hair and lifted her head. She coughed spurts of water and blood as her neck was craned back and Ben's face filled her vision. "And you, Abby, I don't ask for allegiance from. I don't want yours. If I kill you... I'll likely grow even more powerful than I am now. But I already am the most powerful Lord in Lordran, so you get to live. You get to live and watch me rise and rule." He leaned closer. "And when it is done, you'll know... you'll know I was better than you. You'll know I beat you. And then... then you can call me your Lord."

He released her hair. Her face splashed back into the puddle.

Thunder roared overhead. Abby felt rain on the back of her neck. Time passed; she wasn't sure how much. When she opened her eyes to slits again, Ben, Patches, Pharis, and at the tail end of their party, Griggs, were stalking through the crowd, allowing the men and women to grovel and kiss at Ben's boots. Abby turned towards Domhnall. He was still breathing. She crawled to him.

"Domhnall," she croaked, gently brushing aside damp hair from his face.

The man's eyes flickered but did not stay open. The faintest hint of a smile took his lips. "...Abby..."

She sobbed, leaned to him, kissed his cheek. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I... I couldn't stop him... I'm so sorry, Domhnall."

"Abby... listen... the dark times are... like a passing cloud... they don't last... the light comes around again... it always does... strength... wait out the clouds... they pass... they always have... they always will..."

He pulled a deep breath that caught in his chest. When it released, he did not pull another, and Abby knew he never would. She pressed her brow to his and sobbed against him.

Something had caused a stir in the crowd. She could hear gasps and chatter and a few yelps. When she looked, she saw things coming in the night through her blurred, tear-streaked, vision. Dark things. Black things. Things with torches in one hand and swords in the other. Things with masks that looked liked skulls. Things that carried a change in the air with them, making it cold, making it heavy, making it hurt. The things marched up to Ben, stared at him, and knelt. They were his things then... Abby knew that. The dark things were all his because he was Lordran's darkest thing. The king of darkness. The ruler of darkness. ...The Lord of it.

She laughed then. She did not know why.

Her eyes found Anastacia's corpse lying a bit further away on the steps. The woman's hand was still wrapped around whatever had given her her

courage, her strength, her comfort, and had been her shield in her final moments. Abby crawled to it. She wanted it. She wanted the strength it had given the firekeeper for herself.

When she pried Ana's lifeless hand open, only a piece of paper sat within. Lautrec's note, she realized. She took it, knowing it was a wrong thing, but knowing it was a necessary thing all the same. She unfolded the flaps and read.

Her tears came harder.

The only words written were the only words, Abby supposed, Anastacia ever needed to hear. Three simple words that had freed her from a lifetime of suffering.

Written on the paper were the words: 'I forgive you'. She laughed then.  
She did not know why. 


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 51

The rock he'd found was perfect. It was smooth and flat and felt good cradled in the nook of his index finger. He cocked his arm back, threw, released. The stone skipped across the pond as if it had been born to do so. He counted seven good leaps before the last few trailed off and the rock disappeared beneath the water; shimmering then with the golden goodbye of the Carim sunset.

Anastacia giggled beside him. The sound was sweet and soft and melodic, and Lautrec couldn't keep the smile from his face upon hearing it. He turned to her. His sister had always been pretty, but bathed in the sun's last light - she was breathtaking. "You won't beat that throw."

Ana smiled. "No. Not today." A cool breeze swept across the pond and sent her hair whipping around her face. She clawed it away and looked skywards; the twin reflections of the Sun first illuminating, then fading, in her eyes. Her expression darkened. "I have to go now baby brother."

"Go?" He reached for her hand, but when his fingers grazed it, she dropped the stone she was holding and pulled away from him. "Well... alright, Ana. Play again tomorrow?"

"I can't."

"Why not?"

Anastacia laid her hand atop his and stroked his fingers. Her eyes were rheumy and wistful, and when she leaned in to kiss his brow, he smelled the musty scent of smoke in her hair; as if she'd been in a fire. She pulled away and took his chin in her hand. "Thank you, Lautrec. Your words let me go in peace. I love you, my brother."

She was crying then, and Lautrec could only stare upon her, shaking his head. "I don't... understand, Ana."

"Look." She turned his head to the pond and leaned out with him to peer into it.

What Lautrec saw reflected in that shimmering gold and blue surface was not the boy and girl he and his sister were, but the man and woman they'd one day be. His adult face held a hardness in it, like his father's before him, but Ana had kept her youthful prettiness. The only thing scarring it was the blood trickling from her nostrils and the white sunken pits where her eyes should have been.

Lautrec gasped, spun to face her, and- -she was gone.

-o-o-o-

He woke with a pain in his back that, Lautrec supposed, accompanied all aging warriors without proper bedding beneath them. He rolled to his back, sat, and stretched his neck. The visions of his dream were already fading, but Anastacia's face-that lifeless, sad, thing that had appeared in the pond-clung to his mind and refused to let go. He was so fixated upon it, it wasn't till the voice spoke that he bothered taking in his surroundings.

"Still your anger, knight," it said. "And you won't die here today."

As Ana died last night? He turned, his eyes sweeping the little hall and bonfire they'd rested at in the connecting lands between Blighttown and the Demon Ruins, and landed on the speaker, sitting opposite the bonfire. It was the pyromancer, Laurentius, and beside him-a dagger held to her throat-was Quelana; bound in ropes, a cloth gag tied tightly between her lips.

Lautrec stared at her, but Quelana could only return the stare across the fire at him; the red of the flames dancing in the green of her eyes and reminding him of the way the sunlight had faded out of Ana's. "I think my sister is dead," he told her. Her brow lifted, lines of worry blossoming around her eyes.

"Are you delusional, knight?" Laurentius asked. "Do you not see me here?"

Lautrec ignored him. "Something bad has happened," he went on. "I saw Ana in a dream." They say dreams are the Gods speaking to you, a boyhood friend from Carim had once told him. If it were true: what cruel God had sent him his dead sister? "I think she's gone."

Quelana's expression saddened. She shifted a bit in her ropes.

"Gods curse you, Lautrec, look at me!" Laurentius demanded, pressing his blade closer to the witch's throat.

Lautrec turned his way. Should've killed him when I had the chance. "Well, what do you want?"

Laurentius' face reddened. "What do I want?"

"Everyone wants something. You've clearly gotten the drop on me. You managed to bind and gag the witch there without so much as stirring me. You could have just as easily cut my throat while I slept. You didn't." Lautrec's eyes narrowed on the pyromancer's. "So what do you want?"

For a moment, Laurentius only sat staring, his mouth moving up and down soundlessly, not unlike a fish's pulled from water (or a pond). Then his brow furrowed and he pointed a finger across the gap between them. "I'm in control here, knight! I'll ask the questions and you'll do the

answering!"

The pyromancer's face resembled a rat's beneath his hood. It had a weak jawline and a thin nose and Lautrec imagined all the ways he could break it if the man was just a little closer.

"Don't get any ideas, Lautrec," Laurentius warned, perhaps sensing his intentions. The pyro leaned nearer to Quelana and sniffed at her hair. Quelana frowned and pulled from him, but he kept her body close to his and the dagger pressed against her throat. "I'll take her life if you try anything."

"A strange way to treat someone you claim to 'love', isn't it?"

"I do love her," he snapped, but his look softened when he turned back on Quelana and brushed his knuckles against her cheek. "I love her so much that if we cannot be together in this life, I will send us off to the next. There we will always be together." His eyes flicked to Lautrec. "Attempt to attack me and I'll cut her throat and then my own. Then only the Gods will stand to keep us apart, but my love is so true, they would never do such a thing. She will be mine in the world's beyond. Forever."

He's mad enough to do it, Lautrec realized, watching as the pyro caressed Quelana's hair and his slimy tongue slipped out of his mouth to run against his lips. Lautrec hadn't worried about the dagger at Quelana's throat till then. Now, the threat was real and was stirring an anger in his chest, heating his blood, making his fingers itch. He could feel the weight of his shotels on his thighs. His hands felt a sudden emptiness; he wanted badly to grip his blades. His gaze floated to the witch again and a thought occurred to him. "Why don't you take that gag from her mouth so we can-"

Laurentius laughed. "You think me a fool, knight? I know what powers my lady possesses not just from her hands," his fingers moved to her cheek again, "but from her tongue. She would enslave my mind with a few simple commands in my ear and you've twisted her thoughts so fiercely, the first thing she'd likely do is have me take my own life. No. She will remain silent until she learns to love me as dearly as I love her."

"If that doesn't happen?"

Laurentius shrugged. "I'll cut her tongue out."

Lautrec watched as the pyromancer's grip tightened on Quelana's arm. He pictured hacking the man's hand off. "I'm going to kill you, pyromancer. Sooner or later. I'm going to kill you."

"No you're not," Laurentius told him. "Because the three of us are continuing on this little 'adventure' you've started, Lautrec. We're heading into the frozen lands of Izalith together." He grinned. "And you are taking point."

Everyone wants something. "Is that so..."

"It is. If I'm to start a life with my love in this world, the world must first be preserved. The only way to accomplish that is by retrieving that Lord Soul shard so the way to the Kiln can be opened and Gwyn can be dealt with. You're going to retrieve it, knight. And deal with any... problems that may stand in our way."

Lautrec looked the man over. He wasn't dumb, but he was far enough from smart that Lautrec figured he could be dealt with... in time. He nodded. "Alright."

Laurentius returned the gesture before pointing out the golden armor laying sprawled out beside the bonfire. "Dress yourself, knight. The road before us is long and cold... and who knows what dangers might present themselves."

This time, Lautrec pictured hacking the man's head free from his neck. But not yet, he thought, held his tongue, and rose to begin the arduous task of adorning his armor unaided. When it was done-the armor was never set quite right without a squire to help, and Lautrec found himself fidgeting about to get it to lie correctly around his frame-he faced Quelana and they shared a look that, Lautrec thought, told him they were on the same page. Wait, that look told him, wait and the situation will deal with itself. And perhaps... perhaps there was something more in her eyes as well.

Laurentius looked between them, anger tightening the lines of his face. "Enough!" He demanded. "She isn't yours! You're a savage and you've tricked her into caring for you. I... I forbid you to look at her! Move! Go on! Take point and do everything you can in your simple little mind to forget Quelana and I exist back here. Move!"

Lautrec faced him. "Was that you following us out of the Valley of the Drakes?"

"I said move."

"How did you survive that fire I had the witch send behind us to burn our trail?"

Laurentius grit his teeth, pulled Quelana near to him, and pressed the dagger so hard against the flesh of her throat, Lautrec saw a trickle of blood come away. His fingers itched. They reached for his shotels.

"Don't," Laurentius commanded. "Just move."

Without an option that didn't endanger the witch's life, Lautrec had no choice but to listen. He moved.

While he backtracked through the underground hall that led away from

the bonfire and towards the uncharted lands of frost and ice beyond, Lautrec mused on his dream. When he thought of his sister as dead, a great emptiness stirred in him. He didn't feel happiness nor sadness nor even that old, familiar, friend of his: anger. He only felt an emptiness, as if when Ana moved on, she had taken a part of him with her. A part he'd never see again. If she's dead at all, his thoughts reminded him, but after considering it a moment, he knew she was. He didn't now how, only that she was gone.

Uncertain of how to deal with them, he cast the thoughts aside and focused his attention on the path before him. The hall ended, opening into the base of a tower that looked as old as time itself and smelled appropriately. At one side: stairs. At the other: the ice-crusted tunnel that had sent Quelana and himself to the bonfire in the first place. When he stepped nearer to it, he could feel the coldness reaching forth from within and running its icy fingers along the skin of his face and neck. He moved closer, lifted an arm, and ran his hand alongside a veil of web and ice. It came free from the ceiling and clung to his hand; the miniature icicles shattering as they shook loose and crashed beside his boots. His eyes lifted to peer into the tunnel. It wrapped around a bend and vanished. Along the walls, the deeper they went, the thicker the ice took hold.

"Go on." Laurentius' voice commanded behind him.

Lautrec didn't bother looking at the man. If he had, it would have only served to wake his anger again, and he'd have to waste time quelling it. He stepped into the tunnel. The ceiling was low overhead, and Lautrec kept his eyes upon it as he went further and further, wary of some corpse's (Ana's) hand poking out from the webbing above to reach for his throat.

He was nearing the first bend, a curiosity rousing in him as to what lied beyond, when he heard struggling at his rear and spun back immediately. Laurentius was wrestling with Quelana, who-despite her binds-was putting up a good effort to be free of him. "What's the matter with you!" The pyromancer shouted as he made to still her writhing against him. "You can't escape me, Quelana! My love for you is too strong to be rid of so easily! Please! Calm yourself! You-"

"She's afraid."

Quelana stilled upon hearing Lautrec's voice, and Laurentius took hold of her, casting a look of incredulity into the tunnel. "Afraid? Nonsense. She's a Daughter of Chaos. A witch who-"

"Who is returning to her home," Lautrec interjected, "which has become frozen and foreign and hostile since she fled it so long ago, and now which she is being brought back to, bound as the prisoner of a man, I assure you, she despises." He reached to the wall and scraped away a

sheet of ice, balling a fist around it and sprinkling it between them. "She fears the unknown. As any rational man, woman, or witch would."

Where do you go when you die, Ana? The thought was so sudden and tangential, Lautrec was taken aback that it had surfaced at all. He shook it from his head and narrowed his eyes on Quelana's own; green and soft and beautiful. "I assure you, witch, whatever awaits us will have to face me long before it has to face you. You'll be... safe."

Quelana held his look a moment before nodding her head; the stiffness fleeing her posture at once.

"And you will always be safe in my presence, my love," Laurentius added, flashing a smile that was neither confident nor comely, and Lautrec at once wanted to give him another sort of 'smile', a bit lower, a darker shade of red, and right across his throat. Quelana grimaced around the gag in her mouth, and might've echoed Lautrec's thoughts verbally if she could have. Instead, she simply turned from the man, allowed herself to be taken in his arms once again, and walked slowly forward; her eyes held on Lautrec's. Thank you, the look said, and Lautrec nodded his acceptance.

The tunnel ended a bit further on, and the Demon Ruins began. Lautrec ducked beneath a curtain of frosted web and his boots crunched into snow immediately. When he lifted his head, the sight of what lay before him fell his mouth. A chamber, a chasm, a hole in the world, a great, gaping, pit tearing into Lordran's belly. He couldn't decide what to call the thing, but whatever it was: it was massive and all around them and sheeted in blue and white ice. The rumors had been true: the Ruins were frozen over.

Sprawling before him, like an ocean of white, snow covered every inch of the grounds underfoot; carpeting the sloping hill his feet rested upon and crawling all the way up to the mound's crest where it disappeared down a steeper embankment. The ceiling of the thing-if it could be called a ceiling at all-stood hundreds of feet above, as if someone had layered a sheet of frosted rock over the sky to blot it from reaching the Ruins. The rocky, ice-encrusted, walls widened out at either of his sides to wrap around in an enormous sprawl that spanned the entire cave; hugging the cold, darkness, in its embrace. A wind was carrying up from somewhere below the embankment on his right, and Lautrec watched his breath form to a puffed ball of fog before his mouth. As he rubbed his hands together to stave the chill from them, he could heard the earth below grinding and groaning like some restless and ancient beast in slumber. He had bore witness to a great number of oddities since riding on the wings of the great crow so long ago to fetch Abby and Ben from the Asylum. None had left him feeling so in awe. Am I responsible for this? He wondered, then, creeping back into his thoughts like a plague: Where do you go when you die, Ana?

"Mother of Izalith..." Laurentius muttered beside him, and Lautrec turned

to see the pyro and Quelana standing beneath the tunnel's mouth. Both their eyes were wide and drinking in the sight he'd just filled himself on. Quelana was trembling, and Lautrec at once wanted to go to her and take her in his arms and smell the sweetness of her skin as he had that night outside the church. When he took a step forward, though, the pyromancer's blade was at her neck at once. "Stay back."

Lautrec held Quelana's eyes. "A strong flame does not waver."

She breathed deep, balled her hands to fists, and nodded; some, but not all, of the fear fleeing from her expression and posture as she did.

"Go on," Laurentius commanded, nodding to the sloping path of snow before them. "She's fine with me. Move."

Lautrec checked Quelana's look once more (she nodded her approval) before turning and facing the climb awaiting him. He sighed, stretched his back, and began it. The snow under his feet was hard enough not to sink into, but soft enough that it still clung to the bottom of his boots, fighting to keep him place. He wrestled against it, won, and crested the hill. Beyond was a steep fall of rock and snow that flattened out at the bottom to a long stretch of icy plaines. Dotting the lands here and there were lakes of pure ice that had once, he'd been told, been lava. Their surfaces gleamed and glinted and reflected like mirrors peaking out of the earth, and Lautrec thought only briefly how they resemble Carim's ponds. He thought of skipping a stone across one, but a sadness threatened him, and he set the idea aside at once.

It wasn't long before the pyromancer's commands were at his heels once again, and Lautrec could only brace himself as he began the dangerous descent to the plains below. His boots were rigid on the bottoms for good- footing, but even they slipped on occasion as he turned them sideways and clambered cautiously down the embankment. His gauntlet-clad hands provided good aid as he leaned into them and found handholds, but the snows seeping in and kissing at his fingers with icy lips was too much to hold any one bit of land for long. He turned back briefly to see that wherever Quelana laid her bare feet, the snows withered and died away, as if in fear of the fire she carried within her, and her and the pyromancer's goings were much easier.

After the long and arduous endeavor was complete-Lautrec thankful to have even-footing beneath him once again at the embankment's end-he stepped forward into the wide, vast, plains of snow and ice and let the wind breeze against his face, carry his hair, water his eyes. I will not die here, he told it, and neither will the witch. It gusted then, as if spitting in the face of his claim, and Lautrec thought, If that's a challenge, then I accept.

Laurentius and Quelana joined behind him, the witch's eyes flittering about the enormous, cavernous, walls around them as if to keep vigil over

every shadowed nook housing a potential danger, and the pyromancer at once pointed the way forward.

Lautrec followed the line of his finger to an indentation across the plains, where a mountainous path was carved into the rocky wall there and twisted down around to a lower level of the ruins. Between them and that: a long stretch of snow and ice and little else. The path narrows, Lautrec thought, wasting no time in heading towards it. And when it does, the gap between my shotels blade and the pyromancer's throat narrows with it.

As they journeyed forward, that cold wind reeled up from deeper below again and sent both Quelana's and Laurentius' robes and cloaks billowing out around them; the fabric barking crisp snaps at the air. Lautrec lifted a hand to his brow and shielded his eyes from the worst of it, all the while making his feet keep on moving, lest the snows reach up around them and pull him under. Now you're thinking like the witch, he thought with a reproachful shake of his head.

At the midway point, they passed a great lake of ice laying beside the path, and when Lautrec glanced into it's shimmering, reflective, surface, Ana was standing behind him. He spun, lost his footing, and slipped to plant his ass and hands in the snow. His heart thundered in his chest as his eyes scanned the plains, but there was nothing to see but ice, snow, and Laurentius' smug grin as he looked down at him.

"See a ghost, Lautrec?"

Quelana took a step towards him, concern in her eyes, but the pyro yanked her back against his chest.

Is that where you go when you die? Lautrec rose, brushed snow from his greaves and gauntlets, and-hesitantly-looked into the ice-lake again. Only his own face greeted him. At the very bottom of the lake, perhaps ten feet from the surface, perhaps ten-thousand, he saw lava; still living, still waiting, still warm.

His eyes were still transfixed upon the thing when Laurentius' voice came again. "Let's go, knight. We don't have the time for you to be sight-seeing. Move up past those mounds of snow and we'll be on the road to Izalith."

Lautred glanced to his side. Littered around the plains near to the pillared path carved in the mountainside, three, large, piles of snow rose to mounds, kissing the earth below in swollen lumps. Pale curves, he mused, turning to Quelana and remembering the other pale curves he had wondered about the night he'd nearly drowned in his wineskin.

"Go," Laurentius barked, apparently not caring for the way he was looking at Quelana. The pyro took hold of her and pulled her a bit closer.

Lautrec went, but he'd only made it five steps before his eyes found

something strange enough to give them halt. Beside the three mounds of snow, he could see little tufts of air breezing intermittently at their bases, starting and stopping and starting again, and each time they did, the air around them fogged over as his own breath had when-

"Stop," Lautrec whispered at once, raising his hand. "Don't try anything, Lautrec. I'm warning you-"

"Shut up." He stared at those tufts of foggy air and the realization washed across him. He reached for his shotels. "Those aren't mounds of snow."

"What? What madness are you-"

A groan, deep and bassy and close, rumbled the snowy earth underfoot. The 'mounds' stirred.

Laurentius' mouth fell agape. "Oh... oh Gods..." Beside him, Quelana was trying to communicate something, lifting her bound hands as high as the ropes would allow them and grunting against her gag. Laurentius pried his eyes from the snows and stared at her; his face lined with dread. He shook his head, snatched her hands, and shoved them down to her waist again. His arm draped her body and he began pedaling them backwards. "Kill them, knight!" He shouted. "Whatever rises from within those frozen tombs, kill them and send them back to Izalith or we all die."

"Kill them?" Lautrec shouted in return, but the words were drowned out by a great and mighty roar.

He turned to face it.

From beneath the piles of snow, the beasts rose. Taurus Demons, the same as Quelana and himself had come across and defeated at the Firelink Shrine so long ago-minus the deformity of a second head-burrowed up from the blankets of white sheeting over them. They exploded outwards, sending a small blizzard to rain around their massive frames. Snow and ice clung to their fur. Their eyes were red, sunken, pits staring out of their snouted heads. When they stood fully erect, they towered over him, even from their position fifty feet across the plains, and looked his way. They snorted foggy air from their nostrils, growled, lurched, looked to each other, and bent. Each came up shortly after with an enormous greataxe clutched in their clawed hands. They barred teeth that were sharpened to fangs and thick with drool and decay, bellowed a roar that poisoned the air with a foul odor, and began marching forward. Right at him.

Lautrec stepped back, the new shotels that Andre had forged him held at the ready. The weapons had never even tasted blood yet, and here they were - the last things standing between him and certain death. His eyes flicked between the three things as they approached. The last time I faced one of these monsters, the numbers were in my favor, not theirs, he

thought. And this time... I won't have Abby and her 'gift' to calm their rage. "Pyromancer! Don't be a craven you bastard! Fight with me!" He shouted back over his shoulder. "If I lose, what will stop them from coming for you next!?"

"Then don't lose!" Laurentius' voice came in return. "I can't risk my love escaping me!"

Lautrec would have shouted another curse at the man had one of the beasts' thundering roars not caught his attention. The demon nearest him, centered in the trio of fur and fangs that flanked it, gripped at its greataxe with two clawed hands and broke into a sprint that's deftness defied the creature's size and weight. It opened its jaws. In the pit of its mouth was a long, lashing, tongue that slobbered over its fangs, and when its eyes narrowed onto Lautrec, it took on a hunger.

Lautrec took another step back and his heel caught in a tuft of raised snow. He twisted his body to regain footing, but his other boot slipped forth and he crashed to his ass. His momentary lapse of balance was enough to put an eagerness in the demon's footsteps, and the entire ruins came alive with a thumping as the thing approached. Lautrec got his elbows under him, but far too late. The demon leapt into the air, greataxe raised over its head, and sailed forth with a fresh spray of snow coming along beneath from its hooved feet. Lautrec slapped his right elbow off the ground, threw his weight left, rolled, and-

-the spot he'd rolled from exploded in a shower of snow, ice, and rock as greataxe burrowed into earth and the Taurus Demon snarled a hateful, agitated, sound. That close, Lautrec could smell the thing's breath, warming the air, polluting it, and he had to hold his breath as he clambered to his feet and tumbled away just as the greataxe was pulled loose and swung again.

He felt the air on his heels as he rolled forward, and he was just turning on the beast when a second one came flying upon him. He glimpsed the greataxe, the tower of fur, the red eyes, the fangs; they coalesced into the perfect vision of death. Then-

-instincts took over and he leaped towards the beast himself. The demon went over, he went under, and when they'd both gotten solid footing, Lautrec was at his rear, shotels raised, and buried both blades into the monster's hind quarters. A shrill howl cracked through its barred fangs and the demon twisted around so violently, the flat-side of its greataxe smacked the first demon, sending the beast off balance and roaring furiously at its brethren.

Lautrec stepped back, keeping his weight shifting from heel-to-heel as he did so, ready to move, ready to strike, ready to kill should one of the thing's leap for him. Movement in his periphery. He turned to see the third demon come lumbering up on his flank, wretched back its wiry,

muscled, arms, and swing. The attack came with such force, a tsunami of snow pulled free from the ground and sailed forth alongside the axe, but the demon was big and Lautrec, comparatively, small, and he simply ducked beneath it. Had he been born a taller man, his head might've come off; he'd felt the axe's underside graze his hair. He scrambled forth between the things legs just as it reached and missed for his torso. On the other side, he found a moment's respite, and used it to catch his wind.

"Back!" Laurentius wailed, and Lautrec looked to see the pyromancer and Quelana had attracted the attention of one of the first two Taurus Demons; the tower of fur lumbering forth after them, its head cocked on its side, its eyes red and curious and longing for something to bury its axe into.

He might've went to them-went to her-but the demon nearest him had collected its bearings and was driving forth on him again. Lautrec shouted a warcry and swung his shotels together in both hands as one, conjoined, blade. The attack only provided the most ephemeral of pauses from the thing before it roared and swung its axe down upon him. Lautrec leaped back to watch the attack nestle into the ground between his legs. He turned to flee-

-and the beast backhanded him. The swipe clashed against the breastplate of his armor, sending him up and away, arms reeling, and when he landed again, it was on his back. There was snow in his ears and in his eyes. He clawed it away immediately. His vision cleared, he saw that death was above him again; this time in the form of twin Taurus Demons, screeching as they plummeted their axes down on him together. He winced, dug his heels into two pockets of snow, and kicked. He rolled backwards just in time to hear the earth shatter into bits behind him.

Shatter. He unfolded from the roll into a crouch and looked to the lake of ice. It sat there beside him, shimmering and waiting. He looked back to the Taurus Demons pressing in on him again, and scrambled for it, ice- slicked snows making to slip his boots, but Lautrec refusing to let it. He heard their hooves thundering on his heels, ignored it, and pushed on harder, kicking through the snows as furiously as he could to reach his destination.

He jumped, a knight's instincts, and heard the wind slice from a missed swipe of an axe behind him. His knees landed in snow, but his elbows landed atop the lake. He pushed himself forth and slid onto the frozen thing's belly, refusing his eyes to gaze upon the reflective surface, lest he see his dead sister there again and go mad. He flipped to his back in time to see the world blotted out by the leaping figure of a Taurus Demon.

He could not stand nor move quickly; the ice was too slick. He only watched, waited, threw his shotel back behind him to hook into the lake's surface, and pulled himself out of the way: a knight's instincts.

The Taurus Demon did not land. It hit the spot where Lautrec had laid and where the beast should have landed, but no such thing happened. Instead, it vanished; screeching one last time before the ice cracked apart beneath the impact of its greataxe and swallowed the demon up whole in a gaping mouth of icy, dark-blue, water.

A few chunks of ice floated and bobbed upon the surface. Otherwise: silence. The Taurus Demon was no more.

Lautrec got his legs under him and rose upon the lake's belly, eyeing the second beast, who was stalking back and forth at the outer rim of the ice. Its eyes were narrowed and shrewd and-still-hungry, but the beast clearly no longer trusted Lautrec to blindly lead it around.

Another moment of respite. Lautrec used it to look for Quelana again. Across the plains, he saw her and the pyromancer still backpedaling, Laurentius birthing and hurling the occasional ball of flame from his hand to stave the pursuing monster away, but Lautrec knew it wouldn't last. Pyromancy spells only lasted so long and then they were both going to die. If he didn't kill the demon first.

He looked to his cautious, pacing, friend at the lake's edge again. "Hey! Come on you furry bastard!" He shouted, pointing his shotel forward. "Come get me! Come on!"

The demon's fangs barred and a low, seething, growl rumbled up from its chest, but the monster did not move for him.

"Come on!" Lautrec demanded. He lowered to a knee and set his shotels down between them. "Come on you bastard coward! Come kill the unarmed human!"

The demon snapped its jaws between them, its claws gripping uncertainly at different parts of its greataxe's hilt.

"Here! I'll turn around for you!" Lautrec did, shifting on his knees till his back was to the beast. He raised his empty hands into the air. "Come!" He listened; nothing came. A sideway flick of his eyes revealed the other demon closing the gap between Quelana and itself. Lautrec blew an agitated stream of hot air from his nostrils. "Come ON! You know I've killed two of you things now! Perhaps they were your family? Mother? Father? Hard to tell. You ugly bastards all look the same when you're dying."

He glanced back to see the Taurus Demon throw down its axe. The weapon landed with a soft thud in the snows. Lautrec frowned. Well there's an interesting battle tactic. The demon's jaws widened to an inhuman angle and it bellowed a ferocious cry, batting at its chest. Then it came: fearless, furious, weaponless.

Lautrec snatched his shotels up immediately and rose. Gods, he realized,

it saw the trick I used on its friend. It's abandoned its weapon to make sure it doesn't make the same one. He suddenly felt very, very, bad about his decision to face the thing on the ice.

The demon closed the gap quick, its hooved feet treading much easier atop the icy surface of the lake then Lautrec's boots could ever hope. Lautrec watched it approach, looked to his shotels clutched tightly in his hands, and came to an unfortunate realization: he could not win; not on the ice. Ana, he thought, perhaps I'll find the answer to my own question soon enough.

His vision unfocused on his shotels and refocused on the ice under his feet. He had thought he saw her again, sitting there in the reflection, waiting. She wasn't, though, and the only thing actually awaiting him was his own face, and beside it, a series of cracks, blossoming out around his heel.

He frowned, kicked at it, and watched the edge spread just a bit more. Hope swept through him like wildfire, starting in his belly and billowing up to his head. He dropped to his knees, sheathed one shotel, and took the other in both hands.

Halfway between the edge of the lake and himself, the Taurus Demon barreled forward; breath frosting the air before it as its fangs ground together beneath its snout.

Lautrec angled the butt of his shotel's hilt at the web of cracks atop the ice, raised it high, and drove it down against the surface with such force, his elbows and hands hurt. The cracks blossomed, a few sprays of ice came up, but the lake was otherwise unimpressed with his effort. He grit his teeth, raised the shotel, and did it again. The cracks hands reached out, like a spider's web spiraling from the shotel's impact, but the lake held solid. "Come on!" Lautrec shouted and drove the hilt down again. And again. And again.

The Taurus Demon's shadow fell over him. The air turned foul.

He lifted his eyes to the beast-

-and was smashed with the monster's claws. His vision went black, red, black again, then white; a smothering, all-encompassing, white. When it lifted, his shotels were gone, fallen from his weakened grip, and he was sprawled out on the ice atop his back, defenseless. He lifted his head, swiped at his nose, felt warm blood come away. Towering over him, the Taurus Demon beat its chest and snapped its jaws and cocked its head on its side: fixing him with the look of a victorious opponent after a hard- fought battle.

Where do you go when you die, Ana? The ice cracked.

The Taurus Demon looked down and-

-the ice shattered beneath its hooves. The demon had just enough time to glance up towards Lautrec. Lautrec could only hope his face resembled that of a victorious warrior after a hard-fought battle. The Taurus Demon perhaps tried to roar, but it plummeted into the lake of icy waters so quickly, the sound was lost at once. A claw rose, likely in attempt to save itself, but Lautrec saw it as a flag of defeat. Then the thing was gone; sinking off to freeze in the depths of Izalith with its brother. Only Lautrec remained.

He groaned as he stood, swiping away more blood from his wounded face, and winced as he groped for his lower back. He spotted his shotels and retrieved them before shuffling off the ice and working his way towards the third and final Taurus Demon, who had backed Laurentius and Quelana up to the embankment of snow they'd descended from.

"Hey!" Lautrec shouted, stuck two fingers between his bloody lips, and whistled. "Hey!"

The beast swung its head around.

Lautrec lifted his arms to his side, showing the monster that he was all alone - and that its friends had been defeated.

The creature's eyes scanned the plains, but when they found nothing but Lautrec, it roared, lumbered around, and charged.

Lautrec sighed. He leaned back into a battle stance, readied his shotels, and watched the approach. The creature was a big, clumsy, bastard-the biggest of the pack-but there was one place all living things died, regardless of how big of a bastard you were. He eyed it and watched; eyed it and waited.

When the monster neared enough for a clean kill, he hurled his shotel across the short gap between them. The demon snarled and used its greataxe to easily cast the attack aside. It didn't matter. The first strike was the distraction. The second strike was death. He squinted, aimed, and chucked his other shotel forth in a sweep of his arm. It sliced through the air, spinning and twisting and cutting across the gap, and when it stopped moving, it was only because the blade had found its mark: lodged in the throat of the Taurus Demon.

The creature sputtered, its footsteps coming in sporadic, queer, strides, choked on its own blood, and, finally, collapsed. Its momentum carried it sliding forth along the snow, a long, crimson, trail behind it. When the beast's slide halted, the greataxe fell from its claws. It groaned. Its eyes closed and did not open again.

Lautrec walked to the dead thing, reached for his shotel, and pried it loose. First blood, he thought, dragging the stained blade across the

demon's fur-covered back to clean it.

The second shotel landed in the snows at his feet. His eyes lifted from the weapon to the pyromancer who'd thrown it. "You reckless, fool, bastard!" Laurentius snapped. "That thing almost put its filthy claws on my love!"

Lautrec ignored him. His eyes held on Quelana's. "Are you alright?" She nodded, tugging a bit at the pyro's hold on her.  
"Cut her free."

Laurentius frowned. "Are you mad, knight? You think you kill a couple demons and you start giving orders? No. We aren't through down here. Not even close. Izalith awaits, and you have more work to do getting us there. So pick up your damned weapon and get moving."

The man's throat was much softer-looking than the Taurus Demon's. Lautrec stared at it, wondering how close he could get before Laurentius got his dagger to Quelana.

Laurentius pulled her between them. "Go," he commanded, the dagger hovering balefully beside her pale neck.

In time, Quelana's look told him as she nodded. Not long now till an opportunity arises.

He returned the gesture, bent-his lower back not caring for the maneuver as he did-and scooped up his shotel. He stuck them in their sheaths, turned, and headed out into the plains once again. Further on, he glimpsed the twist of stone and rock and ice that cut into the mountain and spiraled down to a massive squared tunnel. Below lied their destination.

As they passed the lake of ice, Lautrec could not keep his eyes from flicking to its surface one last time.

Ana was there again, walking beside his reflection. She looked serene as she watched over him, and Lautrec all at once felt closer to his sister then he'd had since they were a boy and a girl, skipping stones across Carim's ponds. Where do you go when you die, Ana?

He knew he'd never have the answer to that question-no mortal man could-but now he had an idea, and sometimes that was good enough.

The path ahead lied in wait. Beyond: Izalith.

Chapter 52

The dogs were feasting on Kirk's corpse when they came upon it-a discarded and shadowed lump atop Anor Londo's Great Wall-and in the oppressive darkness before dawn, beneath the rains and the lightning and the clouds, the things looked like humans feasting, and not dogs at all. Tarkus' greatsword came free from its sheath beside him, and Solaire looked to see the man angle the tip of the massive blade forward and shout at the creatures. The deformed hounds that, perhaps, had crawled out of Izalith itself, lifted their heads in unison, spotted the big, imposing, tower of black iron armor driving on them, and scattered off with their tails between their legs; their claws clicking and clacking at the rain- slicked stone as they made their retreat.

"As craven as the rest of Lordran's beasts have grown," Tarkus said; a hint of reproach in his voice. He sheathed his greatsword and stepped to the half-eaten corpse that was to be the dogs' meal, and Solaire stepped with him. Kirk's thorned armor had been pried loose, teeth marks in the dark metals at the hip and shoulder, and the body beneath was littered with missing chunks of flesh. Solaire surveyed the area, but did not spot the man's head; the dogs must have already eaten it.

"Even a man as vile as he should've been given proper burial," Solaire said as thunder grumbled overhead; the Gods perhaps in agreement, perhaps in protest. "No one deserves to have their corpse mutilated."

"Some do." Tarkus bent, scooped the headless body into his arms, and stood. He carried it without much effort to the stone barrier that peeked into the city of Anor Londo and dumped it at once over the side. The drop was steep enough to be maddening, and if Kirk's corpse landed below somewhere, Solaire did not hear it. Tarkus dusted his hands. "There's his proper burial."

Solaire moved to the barrier and rested his arms atop it to glance out over the dark city sprawling before them. Anor Londo's various buildings and towers and chapels were but grey silhouettes in the night, but the relentless rains driving down upon them sent them alive with a chatter. In the East, lightning split a seam in the black sky and the city was briefly painted a pale yellow. Lightning, Solaire thought, holding his hands out before him and cradling them into fists. Gwyn's gift... and mine.

"Solaire?"

He lifted his eyes to Tarkus and cast his thoughts aside. "Well... I suppose at the least we kept a meal from the dogs."

"Aye," Tarkus agreed, pulling away from the barrier and casting a long sweep of his eyes across the wall, the city, and the sky. "Dawn soon."

"We depart for the Great Chapel when it comes."

"I say we go now. Darkwraiths be damned. Sneaky bastards won't get the drop on us twice in the city." He patted the hilt of his sword. "Not without answering to this big bastard here on my hip."

Solaire shook his head. "No... it isn't worth the risk. If we face the things again... we face them in daylight, beneath the mighty Sun's watchful eye. Come. Let us return to camp before the rains and the cold bring a sickness upon the both of us."

And so they did.

Their 'camp' was really the discarded bonfire that had once been watched over by a woman known only as the 'Lady of the Darkling', a firekeeper, who, at one time or another, vanished alongside so many other inhabitants of Lordran. The place was a secluded room, nestled deep into the wall beyond a narrow, sloping, hall that could easily be defended should a fight come their way. At its base, around the burning logs they'd set within the bonfire, Rickert and Rhea were seated; the former with his hands around the latter's waist until Rhea spotted Solaire and Tarkus coming and pried them loose.

"Anything?" Rhea asked, slapping down Rickert's wandering hand at her side.

Tarkus pulled the helm from his head and tossed it beside the rest of their traveling supplies (which, really, was not much more than a few haunches of bread, skins filled with clean drinking water, and some bandages and salves for Rhea to heal with if the need arose) and slumped down beside the fire himself; his legs so long, his bent knees stood almost as tall as Rhea herself. "Few dogs. The headless corpse of our old friend, Kirk. The damned rain, of course. Not much else. We move at dawn, till then, we've got some time to pass."

"No Darkwraiths, then." A look of relief washed across the priestess' face.

"Too bad," Rickert said, lifting a shortsword from beside him and holding it to the bonfire so the flames' light danced on its steel surface. "I was hopin' for a crack at one of those bastards myself."

Tarkus snorted laughter. "Rickert, you'd piss yourself if you had to face a Darkwraith."

Rickert grinned, seemingly oblivious to the insult. "I'd be sure to piss on one of 'em first, though, count on that. Besides... I've faced bigger."

"Oh, here we go," Rhea said. "Bigger?"

"Aye." Rickert nodded, his grin widening. "Bigger. I ever tell you about the time I wrangled up a wyvern?"

Tarkus laughed. "A wyvern? You expect me to believe you wrangled a damned dragon, is that what you're saying?"

"That's what I'm saying, aye. Now, it wasn't one of them big bastards like the Hellkite Dragon in the burg, mind you, but one of them little guys in the Valley of the Drakes. Blue things. I faced one, tamed it, and made it my pet." He shrugged. "Wasn't so hard."

Rhea buried her face in her gloved hands and shook her head. Solaire couldn't stave off the hint of a smile as he seated himself opposite her and removed his helm. He held his hands before the fire so the flames could drive the cold from them.

"You've got a pet dragon, then, aye?" Tarkus asked, a playful look on his face as he prodded the bonfire with a twig.

"Charles."

"Charles?"

"That's what I named him," Rickert explained. "Wyverns are wyverns, though, and soon enough, Charles ran off on me as wyverns are wont to do. He'll come back around, though. Most things always do."

Tarkus snorted more laughter and shook his head. "The idea of a dragon named Charles running around out there beneath this bitch of a storm is about the damned funniest thing I can remember in recent times, Rickert. For that?" He lifted a skin of water, tossed it to Rickert, and lifted his own in salute. "We drink."

Rickert bowed. "Ah, a drink of water! Just like the warriors of old used to have! Slow down there, Tarkus, you don't want all that water going to your head, after all."

"Nothing wrong with a bit of water," Tarkus replied. "My mother used to say-"

"Ah, so you actually had a mother then? I'd always assumed you simply fell out of some giant's arse and set about smashing things."

Tarkus laughed. "Well, you're half right. No giant's arse, just a big, loving, woman's legs. But I was a destructive little thing. They had to bring in a blacksmith to reinforce my cradle when I was a child. I kept breaking the damned thing."

Rhea laughed into her hands and lifted her eyes to the big man. "Tarkus... that's as ridiculous as Rickert's 'pet dragon'."

"Charles," Rickert corrected.

Tarkus lifted his arms. "It's true, Ray. They called me 'Tarkus Cradlebreaker' as a boy. Name stuck till I became a knight and grew about six-and-a-half more feet. People tend to 'forget' silly nicknames when you're towering over them with a greatsword clutched in your hands."

"Aye." Rickert tipped his skin of water across the bonfire. "Drink to that, too."

Tarkus grinned, bowed, and drank.

A moment of quiet befell the camp till Rhea broke it. "Solaire, surely you must remember something about your youth, no? I mean, well, it just seems unfair to rob a man of his childhood."

Solaire cast a wistful smile across the flames at her. "I'm afraid not, my lady. Only a blank canvas stretches across my memory when I try to fish for my past." Upon seeing the look of disappoint wrinkle Rhea's comely face, he added, "It doesn't cause me any duress, I assure you. What about you, my lady? Care to share an amusing tale from your childhood?"

"Oh, I-"

"Ray here had six bloody brothers," Rickert answered for her, ignoring her frown.

"Six?" Tarkus echoed. "Gods... Ray, you've got as many brothers as our good witch has sisters."

Briefly, Solaire's thoughts turned to Quelana and Lautrec. He wondered how their journey was faring, and hoped for the best. Praise the Sun, he added in silent prayer, though where those two were headed, no Sunlight ever ventured.

"I had brothers, yes," Rhea said. "They were sweet and kind and I miss them dearly."

"You speak as if you have them no more." Tarkus pointed out.

Rhea shrugged. "After I left Thorolund on my pilgrimage, nothing good came to those lands, that's for sure. I... I hope they still live, but I'm no fool. They likely fell alongside every other capable man left in Thorolund." Rickert reached for her hands and gave them a squeeze. Rhea smiled appreciatively. "I often find myself thinking of Domhnall's words these day more often than not. Dark times like those that befell Thorolund... and now like these that have swallowed up the whole of Lordran... Domhnall told me they were but passing clouds in the sky. You only need wait till they've moved along, and... the light will shine again."

"Wise words," Solaire said at once.

"Sure," Rickert began, "but a bit optimistic for my taste. Clouds don't just 'move along'. A strong wind has to give 'em a good shove."

"Aye," Tarkus agreed. "And I'm more than willing to be the wind. I know just how to shove, too." He patted the hilt of his greatsword.

Silence again. It was Rhea once more who broke it. "Solaire..."

"Yes, my lady?"

"Do you really believe what we're doing will save Lordran?"

Solaire sighed. "I believe what we're doing is what we can, my lady. Nothing more. Nothing less."

Tarkus reached for their supply bag. He fished out a loaf of bread, broke it in halves, and handed one to Rhea while further halving his own and sharing it with Solaire. The big man took a big bite and chased it with a big gulp of water. "There's been a lot of death in these lands over the last few months. If Lordran is saved and this darkness that's taken it driven out... what world will be left to us in its wake?"

"Well," Rickert began around a mouthful of bread, "there'll be a bit of rebuilding to do, won't there?"

"Plenty," said Rhea. "I only hope there are enough left to rebuild at all."

"War and death has plagued every land in Lordran," Solaire admitted, "but there will always be pockets of hope in seas of despair. Last I heard, there were strongholds still in Carim and Vinheim and Zena and my own home of Astora. When this is all over... the time of men and women will flourish once again, and the time of hollow and demon will be at its end. Praise the Sun."

Tarkus scratched at the scruff of his chin. "Hollows and demons... and whatever else might be lurking out there."

"Tarkus?" Rhea questioned.

"Well, we never did have proper discussion on what we all witnessed come to life in Logan's mad machine at the Archives. There were things in there... things Lordran, certainly, has never faced."

"A sorcerer's illusion," Rickert said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Nothing more."

"Quite the illusion if true," Rhea said.

"It was no illusion," Tarkus insisted. "Logan was a mad man, aye, no one will deny that, but... his machine showed... showed..."

"Another world," Solaire finished for him. "If anything, the machine

showed us that, in part, Logan had the right of it. There are worlds beyond our own. How they are connected and why... I cannot say. But they are there."

Thunder grumbled outside and Rhea pulled her maiden's robes tighter to her body. "I don't much care for the idea of other worlds and other beasts lurking at our doorstep."

"Perhaps at the conclusion of this whole, mad, thing, all worlds will be as one," Tarkus suggested. "Maybe that is what we're truly driving at. I mean... our world has gone and got itself in quite a queer state over these last few months. Something big is happening. Something is changing."

Rhea stared into the bonfire's flames. "It's the end times."

"My lady, please," Solaire said. "I assure you, we are far from the end times."

She lifted her pretty eyes to his own; twin flames dancing within. "How can you assure that, Solaire? How can you tell me such a thing after all we've witnessed and lived through. After the cold, and the hollowing, and the Darkwraiths, and this infernal storm that now rains upon us with no end in sight. Lordran as we knew it is no more. This," she said, lifting her gaze skywards, "this dark, cold, husk is all that remains."

"It will change," Solaire insisted. "When I slay Gwyn." Your father, a voice spoke in his head before he could silence it. He cast it aside at once. "When the Lord of Cinder is no more and the great flames at the Kiln are alight once again... you will see, my lady. Lordran will be saved."

Rhea sighed and shook her head. After a moment of silence, she said, "What cruel Gods would task us with such endeavors as these to reach our moment of peace? And why?"

"That is a question man has been asking since man first could question. And one we, unfortunately, never found an answer for."

"If Logan had the right of it about these 'other worlds'," Tarkus began, "perhaps he had the right of other things as well. Maybe our Gods and our Creators have fled from us and taken up hold somewhere far away... somewhere where maybe they're having a jest out of our suffering. Might be they're watching us now, smiling at our pain, observing our anger... reading into our every thought."

Nonsense, Solaire thought. No Gods could be so cruel.

"Entertainment for the Gods, ey?" Rickert questioned. He shrugged. "Could be worse."

"Could be better," Tarkus added.

Rickert tipped his water again at Tarkus, and the two drank.

"The priests and priestesses of Thorolund used to have a saying," Rhea spoke quietly, reverently. "'When even the Gods have abandoned the world, it is the men and women themselves that will decide the fate of mankind.'" She looked to each of them seated around the bonfire in turn. "I suppose, well... that means us."

The four of them went quiet then, each of their eyes held on the fire and the flames, and-Solaire imagined-each of their minds lost in thought of what had came before in their journeys... and what would come next.

-o-o-o-

Dawn broke, spilling pale morning light down the connecting hall and into their little hold. They gathered their supplies, snuffed the bonfire, and set out at once.

Anor Londo was a cluster of grey shapes in the early-morning drizzle and clouds, and upon stepping to the Great Wall's edge, Solaire could glimpse a fog lifting up from the city streets below, gifting Anor Londo with an ethereal illusion, as if it were a ghost-city, floating up from Izalith. The air was damp, and Solaire pulled a deep breath of it and watched as his exhale misted before him. Beyond it, the Great Chapel stood looming on the horizon in wait.

A stone circle rose up to rest at their feet from below; an ancient lift that, by some miracle or another, still functioned while the rest of the world failed around them. The gathered upon it, and it carried them back down at once. The upper world faded as they were shafted into the darkness, and the lower world appeared. It twisted down around a spiraling staircase and ended at a long, barrier-encased, bridge that pointed the way forward.

They stepped back into the rains and followed the finger of stone, Solaire casting wary glances to their sides, looking for signs of ambush, but finding only the arching stained glass watching over them, nestled into the towering walls of the buildings at their flanks. The path curved around another ancient lift, this one seemingly not in as functioning order as the first, before straightening out again. Not much past that, they stood at the foot of a mass of stairs that would carry them to the Chapel's front doors.

"Who architected all this madness anyway?" Rickert asked as they came to a halt. He swept his gaze across the towering structures of stone huddled around them and shook his head. "Think they were overcompensating for lack of size in... heh, other areas?"

"Rickert, don't be so crude," Rhea said. "Anor Londo was the City of the Gods. Gwyn himself sat atop a throne here with his knights."

"Yeah, well, I never was one for history. Slept through those classes in Vinheim."

Tarkus laid an iron-clad foot atop the first step and pointed his greatsword forward. "Gods or no Gods, anything that comes between us and that Lordvessel will fall." He turned on Solaire. Within the eye slits nestled in the sea of black iron around his face, Solaire could see a fiery determination burning. "Lead the way, my brother, and let us take the first step to righting the wrongs of this cold world of ours."

Solaire nodded, pulled his sunlight straight sword from its sheath, and ascended the stairs.

The climb was long, and made arduous by the rains soaking the stone underfoot, but soon enough it was done, and the Chapel's massive doors stood before them, swung partially back on their hinges so that a thin strip of morning light could kiss at the marbled floors within. Solaire looked to the fellowship gathered around him, nodded, and stepped inside.

The air was immediately cooler, and carried the faint scent of burning incense. Solaire's boots clicked against the floor, and the sound carried queerly into the high, stone, rafters that loomed over them in criss- crossing patterns. Tarkus shouldered past him, his sword clutched before him in defense and took a long survey of the area. Rhea loosed her talisman from within her robes and whispered a prayer. Golden light spilled forth to illuminate the path and Solaire bowed his gratitude. Rickert sauntered along the line of the priestess' guiding light, looking from wall to wall, a shortsword in one hand, a catalyst in the other.

The chapel's hall was long and wide and tall but-most importantly-empty. Only the sound of their movement carried beside them, otherwise: silence. They passed rows of pillars that stood watching over them like vigilant sentinels, walked beneath an arched sect of stone that led to another flight of stairs, and ascended them to reach a second hall; this one slightly more compact than the first, but still fit for a God.

"Our travels are easier than I would have thought," Rhea spoke into the quiet that smothered the hall.

"I don't like it," Tarkus growled. "This reeks of ambush. I came looking for a straight fight."

"You saw the way the dogs ran from us," Solaire pointed out. "And the listless way the hollows fought when we were scouting the city a few days past. The spirit has fled from the creatures of Lordran. Let us pray that whatever once stalked thesehalls has fled with it."

"Hello!?" Rickert shouted through cupped hands. His voice carried forth, echoing and reverberating along the walls.

In reply: silence.

"Well, if we'd come unaware so far, we've certainly thrown that bit of advantage away," Rhea said, casting a reproachful shake of her head upon Rickert.

Rickert shrugged. "I'm with Cradlebreaker over there. I'd prefer a straight fight."

Tarkus pointed at Rickert. "Call me that again, friend, and I'll be Tarkus Rickertbreaker." Laughter rumbled from beneath his helm.

Sound erupted into the hall: stone slicking against stone.

All four of them were at the ready at once: swords and talismans and catalysts held before them in a line of defense. Further into the chamber, however, the only thing that moved was a pair of twin lifts, circular and stone, like the one that'd carried them into the city in the first place. They were nestled into the wall in cylindrical shafts, and looking upwards, Solaire knew they spilled out to the hall's upper balcony... and the Chamber of the Princess beyond.

"Eerily inviting, isn't it?" Rickert asked.

"A trap?" Rhea questioned.

Solaire shook his head. "No... the lifts come for anyone who steps into the hall. I've seen them activate plenty of times before. When the last Chosen and I cleared the trials held within these walls, they took him to... her."

"The Princess of Sunlight," Tarkus said. Solaire nodded.

"Well... no time like the present, ey?" Rickert asked, strolling backwards toward the lifts with his arms raised to his sides.

Tarkus and Rhea looked to Solaire for approval, and when he gave it, the three of them followed in Rickert's path.

The lift itself looked safe enough, but the dark tunnel twisting up into the wall above was as ominous as the stormy clouds outside, and peering into it, Solaire was reminding at once of looking into the Darkwraith's eyes he'd faced in the city a few nights earlier. With no other way up, however, he ushered everyone into the lift beside him. It was still only a moment before coming to life, as if sensing their presence, and carried them upwards.

The ride was, thankfully, brief, and when they stepped out into the upper hall whose balcony was wrapped in golden railings, Solaire looked to the dead bonfire and the Chamber doors beyond at once. Inside was the

(sister) illusion of Gwyn's daughter. He led them there hastily, stopping only to survey the cast-iron doors that blocked their path before laying his hands atop them and pushing. They slid back easy enough. Solaire stepped inside.

Sunlight, golden and soft and warm, shafted through velvet curtains at the rear of the chamber to pool at his feet and lay across his vision. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes and took a blind step forward. There was a sweet scent lingering in the air, and Solaire found himself wondering how this chamber had somehow maintained its decency while the rest of the world crumbled into decay. Another step and his eyes adjusted; another, and he removed the hand shielding them.

She was there before him, and Gwynevere-illusion or not-was a breathtaking sight. She was a giant, towering over and dominating every inch of the room. Her body was draped in heavy, white, cloth, spotted with bare flesh here and there that looked soft and of healthy complexion. Her hair fell around her head in a wash of brown ringlets that framed a face that was, in a word, serene. She lay sprawled atop a mountain of pillows and sheets of silk, and her hands-slender, despite her size, and well manicured-lay crisscrossed at the sheets edge. She was smiling.

"Gods..." Rickert muttered, stepping into the room beside Solaire. "That is an illusion? That's the... fairest illusion I've ever seen."

"Oh?" Rhea asked, tugging at his arm.

His face reddened with chagrin. "Well, I mean, just an illusion, of course. No worries, Ray, you'll always be the prettiest real woman in Lordran." He grinned in, perhaps, attempt to disarm her scornful look. After a moment, it worked, and she simply pulled his arm to her own and walked further into the chamber alongside him.

Tarkus pulled his helm free and shook out his shaggy fall of hair. His expression was one of bewilderment and curiosity as he stared at the fake princess. "Gwyn's children," he muttered. "His son lies dead, and his daughter is an illusion. Quite the family."

"Quite," Solaire agreed, stepping nearer to the princess.

Her eyes followed him and him alone; the placid little smile on her face not wavering in the slightest as she watched his approach. At the foot of her bed of silks, Solaire stood; his neck craned back to glimpse her beautiful face. Her head cocked ever-so-slightly on its side. What brilliant mind crafted such a thing? Solaire wondered. She looks more real than some of the painted woman used to look in Astora. He swallowed a lump through the channel of his suddenly-dry throat and removed his helm. They held one another's eyes, and only one question surfaced in Solaire's mind. "How many children did you father have?"

The Princess of Sunlight smiled on. If she'd heard his inquiry, she made no attempt at answering it.

"I know you're not real," Solaire continued, "but, surely, you must have been given some... some information. It is you, after all, that guided the Chosen on his journey to collect the Lord Soul shards. You must know something. You must."

She smiled; nothing more.

"Answer me!" Solaire demanded, feeling a surge of anger for the first time in a long time coursing through his veins.

"Solaire," Tarkus' voice came softly from his shoulder. The big man's hand laid atop his forearm. "She's not real. Let it go."

Solaire held the princess' eyes and waited till the anger left him before speaking again. "There are those who would call you my 'sister'. I only want the truth of it. That's all."

She smiled on, the sweetness of the expression turning to one of sardonic cruelty before him.

He sighed and lowered his gaze to her crossed hands. Between them, set a bit back, was a golden chalice, chipped at its edges and scarred at its sides. The thing would eventually swell to ten times its size before the entranceway of the Kiln, widening its golden mouth to swallow up the souls of the fallen Lords and open the path, but here atop the princess' bedding, it was but a chalice; not one fit for the hand of a giant, but of a man. Solaire reached and closed his fingers around it, half-expecting the illusion of Gwynevere to reach up and stop him. She didn't, and he pulled it away unabated.

"That's it then?" Rhea questioned. "That little thing is what will hold the soul shards?"

"Eventually," Solaire said. "When its ready to accept them and turn them to flame before the Kiln, it won't be so little." He lifted his eyes to the princess once more. Her smile had not changed, but her eyes had. There was something housed within them that Solaire could not quite put his finger on. A... hint of malice, perhaps. He cast a shrewd look upon her and stepped back from the bedding, Lordvessel in hand. "Let us leave this place. You had the right of it, Tarkus. This is nothing but an illusion. And we've retrieved what we've come for."

They were gathered beneath the chamber's doors when her voice finally birthed words from her giant's lips. They came, soft and sweet and quiet: "None of you will leave this place alive."

Solaire shared a look of incredulity with Tarkus beside him before turning back to the bedding. Gwynevere hadn't moved, and her incessant smile

remained, but that malicious look in her eyes had risen more prominently to the surface of her pupils; a quiet fire staring out of the pits of some sorcerer's long-forlorn illusion.

Rhea was clutching dearly to her talisman at her chest. "Did that thing just... speak to us?"

"Can it even do that?" Rickert asked.

"It doesn't matter," Solaire told them. There was a fear stirring in his chest, but he was a knight, and all knights knew how to deal with that feeling when it arose. You simply drove your mind's sword through it and moved on. "Let's go. We're done here."

They were turning to do just that when that familiar sound of scraping stone boomed into the hall outside once again, only this time, it was coming back from the entrance to the city, and it lasted much, much, longer than before. It came to an end with a loud clang that resounded in clapping echoes and trailed off to muted ticks. As the four of them faced one another in turn, they shared a knowing look, and Tarkus was the one to voice it.

"That was the doors sealing shut."

Solaire looked once more at the princess before unsheathing his straight sword and moving to the balcony's railing. Below, the hall was empty still, but beyond, in the now-shadowed chamber that led back outside, something was stirring.

Tarkus' hands were rubbing fiercly at the hilt of his greatsword. "Well it's about damned time we got something to kill."

"What do we do?" Rhea questioned. "Force it to meet us up here?"

Solaire shook his head. "No. We'll meet whatever the threat is in the room below. There are four of us... I doubt there are as many of it, whatever it may be. We'll spread out, flank it, and destroy it. Here, Lady Rhea, keep the Lordvessel close and stay near with your miracles."

The priestess took it, nodded, and the four of them moved back to the lift. Their feet were barely planted atop its stone surface before the thing was carrying them back to the ground level. It halted and they spilled out, weapons at the ready, into the room. Solaire signaled Tarkus to split off on the far flank with Rhea while Solaire himself led Rickert around the opposite side of the hall, staying close to the shadows of the pillars and keeping a watchful eye on the doors peeking in from the next room.

Both teams had made it to the doors, and still nothing had come. Across the gap, Tarkus threw his hands up: What now?. Solaire thought on it, gestured for him to hold position, and stepped out to steal a glance at what might await them beyond the doors.

He was halfway there when what awaited them revealed itself.

The legend of Gwyn's four knights was a staple in any school or child's bedroom in Lordran. Children loved to share the tale of the great Lord of Sunlight and his four brave knights. The one who'd been corrupted by and fallen to the abyss tended to be their favorite, another two were not as celebrated, and were instead shrouded in a veil of mystery. The last, and the one rumored to be the captain of Gwyn's guard, was the man they'd labeled: Dragonslayer.

He stood before Solaire then in all his dragon-slaying glory. He towered above even Tarkus, possibly seven feet or more, his armor draped around him in folds and falls that must have taken some talented blacksmith years off his life to craft. His helm resembled that of a lion's face: hungry and predatory. Held almost nonchalantly in his right hand was the famed 'Dragonslayer Spear', the very same weapon that legend told the knight had used to aid Gwyn in the great war on the dragons in man's dawning age. He was the last living knight of Gwyn's army, and now, Solaire knew, he would have to die as the rest had.

Ornstein (that's his true name, Solaire recalled) had the eye slits of his helm locked on Solaire, and so behind him, Solaire saw Tarkus moving in on the flank, his greatsword wrenched back over his shoulder. He gestured for a halt, and Tarkus, hesitantly, gave him one. The Dragonslayer hadn't attacked yet, and he was determined to ascertain the truths that Gwynevere would not reveal. He stepped forth to square off against the knight's shoulder and meet his eyes the best he could a good foot shorter.

"Ornstein. Back from the dead?"

The Dragonslayer nodded.

"And you're here to stop us."

Again, the knight nodded.

Solaire returned the gesture. "Fair enough. Tell me, though, Dragonslayer-"

"You are not his child," a voice thick with contempt hissed from beneath the lion-headed helm. "I heard you speak to the princess. We hear everything they speak to the princess. She is not your sister. And you are no son of Gwyn's."

Behind the knight, something was stomping around in the next chamber. Solaire did not doubt it was the executioner; the one who feasted upon the bones of his victims. The two were never far from one another.

"Smough." Solaire said; it wasn't a question.

The Dragonslayer nodded anyway.

Combat, he thought. Honor. These are things all knights desire. "An offer. Will you hear it?" When Ornstein did not reply, he took the silence as a 'yes'. "If I defeat you in single combat, will you give answer to my inquiries?"

Soft laughter hissed from the lion's head. The Dragonslayer nodded.

"Solaire," Tarkus called across the flank; caution in his voice.

"Go on, my friend," Solaire replied, keeping his eyes locked on Ornstein. "Take Rickert and Rhea and deal with that vile monster-of-a-man in the next room. I will slay the Dragonslayer."

The three of them joined near the doors at Ornstein's side, keeping watching on the man; their weapons held balefully between them and him. Tarkus cast one last look his way-I hope you know what you're doing, it said-and disappeared with Rickert and Rhea into the next hall.

Alone then, the two knights squared off.

Ornstein brought his spear up and took a two-handed grip on it. His lion's head snarled.

Don't start seeing things already, Solaire commanded of himself, shaking the illusion free. He brought his shield arm between them and angled the tip of his sunlight straight sword at the captain.

"Did Gwyn truly have three children?" He asked as they began to circle one another.

"My Lord had only one protege worth remembrance," the Dragonslayer hissed. "And you are facing against him now."

Lightning gathered at the tip of the man's spear and he charged forward with inhuman speed.

Solaire, no other option remaining to him then, rose his blade and pressed in to meet the knight in combat.

The gap closed quickly, then- -they clashed.

Chapter 53

Home sweet home.

Lautrec's words from the previous day lingered in her head, and as Quelana was pulled along before the gaping, dark, square of stone that served as an exit from the Demon Ruins and would eventually twist its path down to Izalith, she didn't think the saying could have been further from the truth.

If the tunnel leading out of the Valley of the Drakes and into Blighttown had been Izalith's eye, watching her and waiting, the one leading into Izalith itself was her home's mouth. It was a big, black, thing with crumbling stone teeth that looked ready to bite down on her and swallow. Clawing up from the foundation itself were gnarled bits of tree roots, spiraling and slipping around the stone in tangles; thin twigs protruding here and there laced with webs of icicles. Within, she could see darkness and frost and little else. The wind had been cold leaving Blighttown; here, it was pure ice on her flesh. The mouth's breath, she thought, closing her eyes at once so she did not have to look at it any longer.

Quelana did not wish to go on further. A dread had taken hold of her chest and wrapped her heart in its black embrace. The ropes that Laurentius had bound her wrists and arms with, however, assured she would go on, and the gag he'd tied between her lips assured she would do so without protest. Her eyes opened and flicked to his beside her and the man flashed a smile that was, perhaps, his attempt at comforting her. Instead, it reminded her of a dog's snarl, and she wanted nothing more at that moment than to erase it from his face. Flames threatened to leap from her fingertips, but Quelana calmed herself and quelled them; if they had leapt, she would have likely set herself ablaze with the way he'd bound her hands.

The man's fingers reached for her face, and-despite her struggles-grazed her cheek and brushed aside loose strands of her hair. "Soon, my love," he whispered; his voice thin and reedy and rat-like, his breath warmer than the tunnel's, but foulall the same. "Soon and we will be done here and this all will be but a fading memory." His eyes moved further along the path. "And soon... our numbers will count two instead of three."

Quelana turned to follow the pyromancer's eyeline. Cutting his way through a thicket of vines further within the mouth of the tunnel, Lautrec awaited. She snapped her eyes back on Laurentius' and shook her head, attempting to speak, but the man's fingers moved to her lips and he hushed her. "Don't fear, my love. I am the only man you'll ever need concern yourself with. Come now. Your home draws near."

And without waiting for her approval, he pulled her against his body and walked forward; Quelana helpless but to walk with him.

They were swallowed up beneath the stone underpass' entrance, Quelana glancing back once more to watch the fading trails of embers that, somehow, still lived in the coldness of the Demon Ruins rain down to kiss holes into the snow from above. Laurentius tugged at her, though, and she stumbled forward, forced to turn and focus her attention on her footing. Further along, Lautrec's shotels slicing and hacking through the frosted vines that choked the path sent queer reverberations bouncing along the walls, echoing off into the darkness beyond. When the way forward was clear, Lautrec stepped into the next room, glancing only briefly back at the pyromancer and herself before doing so; his expression guarded and reticent.

Within the sprawling chamber that awaited, Quelana looked to the ceiling and to the walls, where battle scars as old as, perhaps, the chamber they marked were dented and scraped across the stone. They were the residue of the great beast, and keeper of Izalith's front guard, the Demon Firesage, who had wielded a massive scythe that doubled as a catalyst in defense of the lands beyond. Though she'd never glimpsed the thing-having fled Izalith long before such a beast was necessary-she'd heard her pupils speak of it upon their return journeys, and had glimpsed pictures of it in books at the Archives. She thought at once of its twin, the Asylum Demon, that Lautrec and herself had come across so long ago, and the deformities and tumors that had plagued the suffering monster before her flames had given it the mercy of death. And what deformities now plague my waiting sisters if they still yet live? She wondered. Can a witch deformed to a spider deform any further? Is such a thing possible? Images flashed a response before her mind so terrifying, she cast them aside at once.

Lautrec buried his shotel in a vine thick with a coat of ice and a splinter ran the length of its belly back down into the hole it had come from. He swiped at his brow and turned on the two of them. "You know, the witch's spells would make the goings quite a bit quicker if you cut her free."

Laurentius' answer was curt, blunt, and definitive: "No."

Quelana could see Lautrec rubbing his fingers together in that we he did when their was violence bubbling up from within him, likely wishing to take hold of one of his shotels and bury it into the pryomancer's throat. When his eyes found her's, though, his look softened and he simply sighed, turned, and went back to hacking them a clear path.

Laurentius steered her closer to Lautrec, but the pyro had been wisely giving the knight a good birth since they'd first stated out on the journey, and clearly had no intentions of putting an end to that caution then. He halted her a few feet back and she could do nothing but watch as Lautrec worked. Her eyes found spots of ice beginning to take hold of his greaves and gauntlets; a pale blue kissing at the bright gold beneath. The road grows colder and colder as we travel along it, she thought. I will live through it, but these two are human, flesh and blood, and they may not. She looked between the two of them. For all their similarities-even their

names were similar-she thought the men who they truly were could not be more apart. If things got bad... she believed Lautrec would survive as well. It's who he was. Laurentius... if she was lucky, his cruel and craven heart would simply freeze in his chest and the pyromancer would be no more.

When the path was cleared, Lautrec leaned over his knees, mists of air puffing in and out of his mouth as he caught his wind. "You know," he began, "if I'm too exhausted to kill the nexthorde of terrible things that wants us all dead, the burden will lie with you, pyromancer."

"Let us pray there areno more 'terrible things' in our travels then," Laurentius replied evenly.

"There's always another terrible thing." Lautrec stood, stretched his back, and pressed their path further-deeper-into Izalith.

"Soon, my love," Laurentius whispered, kissed at Quelana's cheek, and led her along behind him.

The path narrowed through a passageway, the top so clustered with frosted roots and vines, the three of them had to lower to nearly their knees to move beyond it. In the waiting room-dark, cold, and quiet-a sprawl of stairs cornered its way both upwards and downwards, but there was never any doubt as to which direction they need head: Izalith was always a descent. Lautrec cast a vigilant sweep of his eyes around them before stepping to the stair's mouth. From Quelana's position at his rear, she could see the darkness of its innards, waiting to swallow him up. Laurentius fished a torch from the small bundle of supplies he'd, likely, stolen from the church before departure, cast it alight with his pyromancy glove, and tossed it across the gap to Lautrec. Lautrec snatched it out of the air, the torch hissing as it cut the air, and spun back to the stairwell. The flames instantly showered the path's darkness with their orange and red light, and, torch and shotel held before him, Lautrec entered. Quelana and her captor followed along behind shortly after.

The twist of stairs wound down, like a corkscrew burrowing into the earth, and ended at the crest of a steep and sloping hill, caked with ice, that spilled down to a room Quelana knew had once housed a great centipede demon. From their position above it, she could hear sounds-old sounds, ancient sounds-groaning and moaning and rumbling the ground beneath her feet. The Demon Ruins may have been dead, but Izalith was somehow still alive. Those familiar black hands of dread grabbed at her chest again and her breath came in short, unsatisfying, pulls as she writhed against Laurentius' arms, desperate to turn and flee. As you fled when the chaos came for Izalith, an inner voice reminded her. Because that is what cowards like you do.

"Still yourself, my love," Laurentius demanded.

Lautrec turned back and Quelana saw a familiar anger burning in his eyes upon glimpsing her struggles. He stepped towards them and-

-Laurentius' dagger was at her throat in a flash. "Keep back, Lautrec! Keep back or I'll paint the ice beneath our feet with her blood. Don't think I won't."

Lautrec's approach halted, but his eye's fire burned on. He was silent a moment before asking, "Do you know where you go when you die, pyromancer?"

A look of incredulity befell Laurentius. "What kind of question is that? Of course I don't."

Lautrec nodded. "You will soon."

A moment of quiet lingered, the threat hanging balefully between them. Then Laurentius snorted mirthless laughter and broke it. "One of us will find that out, Lautrec. That's for sure. Now move."

The two held each other's gaze, but when Laurentius did not budge, Lautrec could only turn and obey the pyromancer's command. He stepped to the edge of the platform, and Quelana was shuffled forth to peek over herself. The slope to level ground below was maddeningly sleep and layered in ice thick enough to hide the massive tangle of roots below; obscuring them and turning them into dark veins coursing beneath the surface.

Lautrec turned to face them. "That's one hell of a treacherous descent. If one of us were to lose our footing and slide down it, the bedding of ice at the end would shatter our bones. You have to cut the witch free. There's no other way."

Laurentius shuffled forward, keeping a wide birth on Lautrec as he moved Quelana to the edge and looked over himself. She glimpsed his expression. It was lined with the stress of a man who knew his opponent was right. A pensive look took him before he shook his head. "No. We can make it."

"Are you a fool?"

"We'll make it," Laurentius repeated. "The Gods favor travels beside us, smiling upon the true love I hold in my heart for Lady Quelana." He squeezed her arm. "But of course, you first, friend."

"You're going to get her killed."

"Well... if it was meant to be..." Laurentius began, letting the back-half of the phrase linger and die in the cold winds swirling between them.

Quelana writhed against the pryomancer's hold, and Lautrec's eyes moved

to her's. For the first time since she glimpsed those grey, piercing, things, she saw a true sense of helplessness housed within. You do care, don't you? She thought. You've likely never let a man talk to you as this one has in your life, and yet you hesitate in acting against him. A newfound appreciation for the knight in his gold armor swelled in her then. Lautrec was putting up with all this... for her. She would've never thought such a thing possible from a man like him when they'd first met in Blighttown so long ago.

Often in her time alone-and there was plenty of that in the swamps and crags of Lordran's underbelly-Quelana's thoughts turned to the only man she'd ever truly cared for as something more than a friend or a pupil: Salaman. When a stir of loneliness took hold of her, as she imagined it took hold of most all living things from time to time, she would picture him there beside her: his arms around her; his warm lips never far from her own. Salaman had been the only man her mind had been able to place in that role, but staring upon Lautrec's face then-handsome and brave-she knew after a lifetime of waiting, she had perhaps found another.

Laurentius shook her arm violently. "What are you staring at!? Move, Lautrec. Move now before I lose my temper."

Lautrec pried his eyes away and faced the hill of ice before them. The sound of his shotels sliding from their sheaths filled the tunnel, then he was carefully and methodically laying his boots down in sideways grooves along the fall; his shotels, when he was far along enough, hooking back into the ice to further sturdy himself. He moved with the slow caution of one who knew a wrong step would bring certain death, and when he was far enough along to, apparently, appease Laurentius, the pyromancer pulled Quelana tight to his chest and began shuffling the two of them forward as well.

Quelana laid one bare foot atop the ice, but her flesh did not house the same power over it as it did the snows. Snow was a fragile thing, a frail thing, and sending it back to the water it birthed from was an easy enough task. Ice was different. It was a resilient old surface, and the only result her footsteps accomplished laying upon it was sending up a chorus of hissing protests beneath her soles.

Still, Laurentius ushered her forward.

The pace was slow, the pyromancer and herself having to use Lautrec's shotel's holes as footholds as they clambered from spot to spot. Only a quarter of the way down, and Quelana had lost her footing three times. Laurentius tightened his grip on her with each stumble and kept them moving. Lautrec loosed his shotels from the ice and slid to a pocket of hardened snow that served him a moment of respite to turn and await their approach, but Laurentius would not move till he continued on, threatening to hurl a ball of fire down to rain over the knight if he refused.

When Lautrec, hesitantly, stepped out to continue sliding and hacking and shuffling down the icy slope again, Laurentius got them moving so suddenly, Quelana nearly slipped from his grasp. For one maddening moment, she loomed over the hill, eyeing the sheets of ice below that lied in wait to snap her neck like a twig, then the pyro's hands were wrestling her back into his embrace. When she was secured, they pressed on.

At the halfway point, as Laurentius and herself made their way to the last hunk of solidified snow that would serve as the descent's final resting spot, Quelana ankle caught at a queer angle against the ground, and when she looked to see what happened, there was a hand-blue and dead and frozen, with the fingernails sharpened to claws-reaching up from beneath the ice to snatch at her foot and drag her below. It was an illusion, nothing more than a manifestation of her fears, and part of her knew that, but another part did not, and that was the part that panicked. She jerked away from the ice so sudden and violent, Laurentius yelped when her body was thrown against him and he twisted back to find footing. Without his arms around her, Quelana slipped atop the ice, her legs sliding out from under her, and then-

-she was falling.

Ice scraped against her legs and back. A blur of snows shook loose beneath her sliding body and clotted her vision, blinding her. She arched her back and made to kick her heels into the ice, but they slipped helplessly against the slick surface. Something hard and cold along the descent smacked her elbow, a flair of pain biting at her entire arm until she squeezed her eyelids shut. She tumbled, her cloak billowing up around her legs and making it impossible to untangle from them. A hunk of ice lifted her briefly into the air and she got twisted around. The ice was at her cheek, kissing death upon her face as she slid and slid and slid, and when she found the courage to open her eyes once more, she saw the final fall looming below in wait.

At a point that she was barely aware had happened, she'd passed by Lautrec in a blur of loose snow and ice, and just as she were sailing to the slopes edge, his hand reached out and snatched at her cloak. A rip sounded as the fabric was torn and for a moment, Quelana thought it wasn't going to hold. Then the knight's other hand grabbed at her arm and she watched as-her momentum halted-her legs went kicking out over the spill. A dusting of snow sailed off it; thankfully, nothing else.

She lifted her head to look back. One of Lautrec's hands was on her arm, the other clutching dearly to a shotel buried in the ice: the only thing keeping them from plummeting forth. Behind him, Laurentius was hurrying down the slope in a mad scramble, his pyromancy glove lifted and readied at his side. "Get away from her!" He shouted between gasping breaths. "Lautrec! You stay away from her or I'll burn us all to hell! Don't you tempt me, knight. Don't you tempt me!"

Lautrec winced, the strain of keeping hold on both the shotel and Quelana herself evident on his face. He shifted his weight. The ice below his weapon splintered. Laurentius barreled down on them. Then-

-the hill snapped, like a fabric blowing taught in a harsh wind, and an entire chunk of ice pried loose.

The three of them plummeted to the base of the hill in a barrage of snows and ice and tangled roots, and when they finally stopped plummeting, the world had been washed away in a blinding white light that was cold on Quelana's cheeks. Snow was in her ears and in her eyes and in her nose, and with her breathing already congested beneath Laurentius' gag, her lungs were denied oxygen entirely. She writhed in the tomb of ice that had wrapped up around her, coughing and desperate for air. Hands found her (blue and dead and frozen, with the fingernails sharpened to claws) and pulled.

The cold, white, blanket was removed from her face in a warm sweep of Lautrec's hand. His fingers found the underside of her gag and yanked it away. Quelana pulled air into her lungs at once, gasping and wincing as the icy stuff filled her chest. Lautrec brushed hair from her eyes and took hold of the back of her head, lifting her up from the snows to aid her breathing. She coughed again, a fresh spurt of snow puffing away from her lips as she did, and Lautrec's hands found her cheeks. "Are you alright?"

"Get back!" Laurentius' shout filled the hall. Quelana blinked her vision back to focus and saw the man burrowing himself a path towards them. There was a small, one-handed, crossbow nestled against his arm. The shaft was set with a bolt; the sights narrowed on Lautrec's back.

"Stop, Laurentius!" She pleaded at once.

The pyromancer halted his approach. His eyes were wide and filled with a panicked urgency as he flicked them between Lautrec and herself. He lifted the little crossbow a bit higher and pointed his free hand at Lautrec. "You get away from her."

"You nearly killed us all," Lautrec told the man calmly.  
"Get back or I'll put a bolt through your skull!" Laurentius snapped. Between their bodies, Quelana saw Lautrec's hand moving for his shotel. "You're quite a stupid man, aren't you?" The knight asked.  
"Get back, Lautrec!"  
"Stupid and loud." Lautrec's fingers inched closer to the shotel.  
"If you don't-"

The ground rumbled and the hall filled with the sound of shifting ice. All three of them turned to see the slope they'd descended was coming down around them in an avalanche. Lautrec clambered up out of the snows, grabbed Quelana beneath her arms, and pulled till she came loose. They hurried for the passageway leading out of the hall, Laurentius at their heels, and when they reached it, Quelana glanced back to see their path fill with mounds of snow and ice and roots, and just when she thought the pyromancer might be buried within it, he crouched, leaped, and cleared the passageway just as the hall disappeared behind him into ruin.

He was on his feet in a flash, the crossbow coming up wobbling but purposeful in his arms. He fixed the sights on Lautrec. Beside her, Lautrec lifted his shotels. The two faced one another, anger in one man's eyes, desperation in the other's. Quelana wrestled against her binds, eager to aid Lautrec, but sound pulled her attention to their rear. She turned to face it.

"Mother Izalith," she whispered, then, to the men at her sides, "Stop!"

The chamber that had once been the stomping grounds of the mighty Centipede Demon no longer belonged to the overgrown insect, but to the nearly four dozen Taurus Demons that littered every last inch of the frosted cavern. The furry mounds of their bodies rose up out of the snows intermittently between the walls, dotting the ice like treetops poking out of a morning mist. Their was frost in their fur and in their faces, and many of them looked frozen solid, but many did not. She could see breath fogging the air before their black nostrils.

"Gods," Lautrec muttered.

Hands grabbed at her body and waist and yanked her backwards. Quelana nearly lost her footing, but Laurentius steadied her against him. He had slipped the thick cloth of the gag back between her lips before she could even consider trying to use her Undead Rapport on the craven's mind, and his dagger was at her throat. "Shhhhh, my love," he hushed her and pointed a shaking finger towards Lautrec. "And you just see us through this mad cavern, knight. Do it now and do it quietly or the whole room will be coming down on us."

Lautrec barred his teeth and his knuckled went white around the hilt of his shotels, but after a tense moment between them, the realization of his defeat washed across his face and he sheathed the blades. He turned, surveyed the room of slumbering monstrosities before them, and began to move.

Laurentius kissed at Quelana's cheek-ignoring her grimace-and nodded for her to follow. They fell in behind Lautrec as he hugged the outer wall of the cavern, the frosted rocks close enough to their side to feel the chill emanating from within. Quelana watched the army of demons closely as they went. If the avalanche in the previous hall hadn't awoken them, she

didn't think there was much they could do to accomplish the task, but she didn't want to take any chances. She kept very, very, quiet.

Lautrec halted them and watched as a Taurus Demon nearby groaned and shifted a bit in its bedding of snow, but when the creature stilled again, Lautrec did not hesitate to get them moving at once.

The cavern circled around in a wide arch, the edges where they walked lined with hardened snows that had once been lava-baked rock. It curved beneath a jagged shelf of ice and, eventually, the tunnel (eye) that led at last to Izalith revealed itself. Before it, sleeping softly and soundly, a Taurus Demon chocked the entrance.

"Damn that beast," Laurentius whispered.

Lautrec glanced back. "So much for you 'favor of the Gods'."

"Move past it, Lautrec. There's little else to be done."

"If the thing wakes, its brothers wake with it. Then we die." Lautrec stared along the path and swiped snow from beneath his nose. "So don't wake it."

They started forth, slowly, and Quelana watched as the demon's chest rose and fell in the pattern of deep sleep. They edged along the wall, Lautrec's shotels the only thing held between the slumbering monster and themselves. The closer they went, the more foul the air grew from the beast's breath. Closer still, Quelana could see its nostrils widening and narrowing, widening and narrowing. The heavy, leathery, lids of its eyes twitched. Closer, the air warmed. Closer, she spotted fangs poking our beneath the frosted fur lining its snout. Closer. Closer. Closer.

A strong flame does not waver. Quelana closed her eyes and pulled a breath. Laurentius led her forward, the three of them having to pass so near to the demon, she felt its fur graze her arm.

The tunnel conjoining Izalith and the rest of the world swallowed them up, and the cavern of death was behind them. Quelana might've breathed relief... but she was finally home then, and did not think relief would come for a long, long, time. The narrow passage carved through the rock and ended abruptly, widening out and spilling them into the cold lands beyond. Lautrec was the first to step out, and if the look of awe on his face were any indication, Lost Izalith awaited.

Home sweet home.

Quelana moved around the tunnel's edge, ignoring the sense of dread and despair that was looming just outside the corners of her mind and threatening to let a madness slip inside, and stepped onto the ice. Izalith- home-sprawled before her in a vision that was both too foreign to be familiar, but familiar enough not to be too foreign. An ambivalence coursed through her then so strongly, she felt as if she were being torn

apart. A part of her saw home, saw the distant structures of ancient stone where, as a child, she had spent her days chatting and laughing with her older sisters; another part of her saw only ruin, caked-as everything below Lordran's surface seemed to be-with ice. A part of her saw the plains where she had played the 'hiding' game with her sisters in their adolescence; another part saw only a barren tundra. A part of her saw mountains of stone huddled together against the rocky cliffs at their sides that had stood tall and proud and housed great buildings and structures; another part saw only crumbling foundations and shattered pillars and a vast, all-encompassing, emptiness.

A part of her wanted to flee; another part wished for nothing more dearly than to press on.

She lifted her eyes to the dark hand of rock that sprawled over the top of Izalith that-as a child-she'd thought was the top of the world. There were cracks lining it now, and above, from the Demon Ruins, snow was seeping through and falling down atop the lost city; not quite as fiercely as a blizzard, but strong enough to obscure vision further ahead. It's snowing in Izalith, Quelana thought. Mother... how you would have loved to see that.

"Almost there," Laurentius spoke into her ear. His hands covered hers and squeezed as he kissed again at her cheek. "Almost there, my love. Then we'll be done with this place forever."

Lautrec stepped forward, leaving the hardened snows of the entrance nook and stepping onto the massive lake of ice that was now Izalith's floor, and had once been lava, and had once been rock; and home. He swept his gaze across the frozen lands before them.

Laurentius shifted a bit beside her, and Quelana faced him. The pyromancer was fishing in his supply bag again. When he saw her watching, he smiled. "Three becomes two now, my love," he whispered. "We only needed aid to reach your home. We will find our way back on our own."

She frowned and shook her head. Laurentius ignored her and pulled the crossbow once again from his bag. A fear stronger than that of returning to Izalith stole across her, and Quelana looked to Lautrec, shouting muffled warnings from beneath her gag. Lautrec turned and their eyes met.

Laurentius took aim with the crossbow, loosed, and-

-Lautrec's chest, just below his collarbone, was filled with the shaft of the bolt, and the only thing Quelana could think was, His heart. He was aiming for his heart. She shouted into the gag again and, if it hadn't been for Laurentius' free arm keeping hold on her, she would've ran to him.

Lautrec stumbled back and looked at the bolt protruding from his body as if it were simply some sorcerer's illusion. He'd said more than once that his armor didn't sit right without being fitted upon him by a squire, and so there were cracks and slits peeking into the soft leathers beneath littering the golden thing. Laurentius had found one, then, apparently, found another: he sent a second bolt into Lautrec's thigh near the hip bone, and whatever pain had been at bay in Lautrec's incredulity fled him. He fell to a knee and his face wracked with agony. Despite the suffering he must've been in, Lautrec reached for his shotels-

-and a third bolt took his right shoulder, wedged between where the mantle met the chest plate.

He fell back to the ice.

Quelana's flames came then, and there was nothing any longer she could do to stop them. They lashed furiously from her fingertips, racing down her own legs and clawing at the snows underfoot. She roared into her gag and jerked free of Laurentius, but he only shoved her to the snows and pinned her in place with a knee. "Be still my love! It's over! What's done is done!"

No, she pleaded inwardly. This cannot be. At the very back of her consciousness, she was vaguely aware that she'd caught her own robes on fire, and that she was burning. Somehow, it didn't seem important. She writhed beneath Laurentius again and felt more flames spiraling uncontrollably out from her palms and fingers stuck beneath her.

"Quelana, stop!" Laurentius pleaded. "You're on fire! You-"

A shotel cut the air and stuck in the pryomancer's chest.

Laurentius jerked back and looked at it, an expression similar to Lautrec's own upon being shot with the crossbow on the man's face. He opened his mouth, but only a twin stream of dark blood spilled from his lips. His hand rose and clawed weakly at the shotel. It did not budge.

Quelana lifted her eyes to see Lautrec propping himself up on one elbow atop the ice. There were three bolts sticking out of him, one shotel missing from his sheaths, and a look of profound sadness in his eyes. He tried to stand, slipped, and collapsed.

You're burning, a voice reminded her, but she didn't care. She just couldn't care.

Laurentius coughed another spurt of blood onto his chin. He swiped it away, but when he looked at his own crimson-coated hand, a look of realization dawned upon him. His eyes narrowed on Quelana's. He nodded. "If not in this life," he croaked through his bloodied lips. "Then the next. We go together... my love."

He raised his arm and the pyromancy glove atop it came aglow with a spell. Laurentius angled it to the ice near them and sent a ball of fire into it. The lake's surface clawed open beneath the flames heat and revealed a dark blue pit of icy waters awaiting below. Laurentius threw his head back and screamed as he ripped Lautrec's shotel out of his chest and tossed it beside them; a fresh waterfall of blood racing out from the wound as he did so. His hands took hold of her. Quelana might've struggled if she could, but a blankness had befallen her mind, and she could only hold her gaze on Lautrec's motionless body.

When Laurentius wrapped her in his arms and kissed her brow and whispered that he loved her, the blankness spread, as the fires on the hem of her robes, across her mind. She faced him. He pulled the gag from her mouth and kissed at her lips one last time before leaning towards the ice. The momentum carried the two of them forward and down... down into the lake's hole and beneath its frozen surface.

Water, cold as the hands of death, wrapped every last bit of her immediately. It rushed into her eyes and nose and ears, turning her blind and deaf andawakening the fresh images of a nightmare of frozen monsters beneath Izalith's lakes of ice with claws for hands and red, sunken, pits for eyes. She might've been struggling, but she wasn't sure. Laurentius' face was before her's and, miraculously, it looked serene as they drowned and froze to their deaths.

They plummeted further and further, the light from above fading, the darkness from below growing, and Quelana closed her eyes. She tried to think, but thoughts alluded her. She tried to breath, but only ice-water filled her lungs. She tried to swim, but the ropes kept her bound and useless. A strong flame does- She managed to pull from the back of her empty head, but whatever the rest of the saying was, she could not remember. She was dying.

Hands on her then. Not Laurentius'.

She opened her eyes and saw the pyromancer's serene expression had fled his face; a look of absolute dread replacing it. His hands reached for her throat-

-but then he was falling and she, somehow, was not.

Laurentius desperately shook his head, the look of a mad man never more apparent on his face then it was in that moment. His lips moved, and though only bubbles slipped from within, Quelana could read the words he'd attempted speaking: "But I love her!"

He plummeted into darkness; his reaching and gloved hand the last thing that faded before he was swallowed whole in the pit of Izalith's frozen belly.

Then those hands were pulling at her, brining her back to the surface, trying to save her, but by then-

-it was too late.  
The world swam away in big, black, waves, and so did she.

Chapter 54

There were few things in life as exhilarating as one on one combat, and if you weren't careful, the thrill of the moment got the best of you, poisoned your thoughts with over-analysis, made your movements sluggish and too calculated. Solaire had seen plenty of young men with capabilities in battle equal to his own, and some even beyond his, fall to a poorly timed thrust of the blade, or a roll that had been pondered over for a half- second too long. The trick was-and, Solaire presumed, all knights who'd survived that reckless, bold, decade of growth from boy to man-you had to live in the moment. He had spent hundreds of hours in his lifetime thinking about battle, so that when the battle came, he would never have to think about it at all.

One of the pillars flanking the entrance of Anor Londo's Great Chapel hall exploded in a flash of crumbling stone. Debris sailed, hung in the air, and then rained down upon him. Solaire lowered to a knee, worked his shield up over his head, and the steel surface absorbed the storm of stone so that his head did not have to. When the shower was nothing but pebbles and dust, he rose.

From within that dust, the Dragonslayer came.

His sword was up in a flash. It caught the tip of his opponent's thrusting spear and smacked it aside, but Ornstein was tenacious in his drive, and the knight's momentum continued barreling him forward till the jagged edge of his shoulder mantle collided with Solaire's chest plate. Solaire stumbled, caught his footing, and raised his shield to absorb another flurry of jabs from the knight's spear. He backpedaled, letting Ornstein believe he had him on his heels, and when the man's relentless assault gave halt, Solaire drove a counter thrust into his chest.

Ornstein twirled his massive spear around. The butt smacked Solaire's gauntlets, and a pain burrowed from his wrists to his elbows. The Dragonslayer jabbed, Solaire leaped to his side. The Dragonslayer charged, Solaire raised his shield. The Dragonslayer jumped into the air with inhuman strength pillaring up from his legs, Solaire watched - and waited.

When the man began his descent, Solaire rolled forward-a maneuver that had lost some of its speed over the years but none of its accuracy-and beneath the plunging spear looking to shatter his bones. He got his feet under him, rose, spun, and-

-Ornstein's arm backhanded him across the face. Solaire's head rolled about in his helmet, and the helm itself twisted at an angle that left him blind. He stumbled backwards, reached for the thing, but a knight's instincts took over and he blindly raised his shield instead. A blow thundered against it with such force, Solaire was nearly knocked on his

ass. Instead, he lowered to a knee, the metal of his greaves grinding against the stone underfoot as he slid, and used the moment to fix his helm.

His vision returned, he glimpsed the Dragonslayer in approach; a ball of lightning cackling around the tip of his spear, as if the weapon wielded all the power of the skies and their storms within it. Solaire sidestepped behind the now half-shattered pillar at the entrance's flank and watched as the knight's attack chewed through the air leaving a trail of lightning residue in the path of its destruction. He shuffled around the stump of the pillar, getting its protective stone between the Dragonslayer and himself. He used the brief moment of respite to return the wind to his lungs.

Beyond the pillar, he could hear the clicks and clack of Ornstein's boots sauntering back and forth in the middle of the room. "Come, craven. Come and die like a warrior."

The voice beneath that lion-headed helm was quiet and confident and held none of the fatigue Solaire had felt already trying to settle into his aging body. Whether the Dragonslayer was a man beneath that suit of intricate armor of his or something else, he did not know. He only knew Ornstein was the last living soul in Lordran that could answer the questions he'd had nibbling at his every thought since Abby had laid her theory at his feet.

"Dragonslayer," he shouted. "I've given you a taste of combat. In return, answer my questions."

"A poor taste," Ornstein said. "You are old, knight, and too defensive. You can drag this battle out, but you will lose it."

"Perhaps," Solaire admitted, "but I will not allow you to walk away from the fight unwounded. If I cannot finish you, my friends will. Praise the Sun. Now answer me! The scriptures and texts of the old age speak of Gwyn having a firstborn. Where are they! You were there, Dragonslayer. Tell the truth of it!"

Soft laughter rumbled from beneath the lion's head. "You want answers? Earn them. Come and land a blow on me, old knight. If you can."

Combat and honor, Solaire thought. Things all knights desire. He pulled a breath, tightened his grip on the hilt of his sunlight straight sword, and rounded the pillar.

Ornstein stood in wait, his spear resting casually against the painted and marbled floor beneath his booted feet. He tapped on it, sending a series of 'clacks' across the hall before raising the weapon and angling the tip towards Solaire. Solaire pressed in, wary of another sudden, inhuman, burst of speed from the Dragonslayer. Ornstein only watched him come,

though, and Solaire swore he saw the lion's mouth of his helm curl into a smile.

The gap closed, Solaire feigned a thrusting strike, pulled back when Ornstein made to counter it, and jabbed for the man's exposed shoulder. The Dragonslayer twisted, caught the blow with the stem of his spear, and cast it aside before tunneling a counterstrike into Solaire's abdomen. The attack landed, Solaire's wind racing out from his belly to his lips, but when his opponent made for the follow-up, Solaire lurched forward, hooked the spear's shaft between his arm and ribs, and slammed the flat of his shield into Ornstein's side. Ornstein rocked back only slightly, but it was enough for Solaire to sweep his sword across the knight's body. The steel of the blade kissed the metal of the man's armor, leaving a long, slanted, wound in its wake.

Solaire stepped back to avoid a counter-blow and raised his shield. He poked his blade over its top. "There's your blow landed, Dragonslayer."

Ornstein looked to his chest plate. When the lion's eyes lifted back to Solaire's, the man behind them nodded and said, "Fair enough."

"What happened to Gwyn's firstborn?"

For a moment, the Dragonslayer was silent, and Solaire thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he lifted the snout of his helm to the rafters above and stared into them as he spoke. "I held the crying babe in my arms once. Blond-haired and blue-eyed little thing... like his father before him." He looked to Solaire. "You may fit the physical description, old knight, but you are no son of our Lord."

"What happened to him? Why did the scholars of the old age attempt to erase him from the books? Why would Gwyn cast his own child away!?"

Ornstein stared at him, cocked his head on its side, and-

-charged. The sudden thrust of his movement took Solaire so unaware, he could not bring the shield that had-foolishly-dipped while he was speaking back up before him, and the man's spear took him square in the chest. Ornstein got his weight underneath Solaire's shoulders and drove him up into the air. Solaire felt solid ground flee from beneath his feet, then he was sailing backwards, his arms splayed out uselessly to his sides as he went.

Ground rushed up to meet his back, hard, and the wind left his chest in one, great, sweep. He forced himself to rise, ignoring his oxygen-starved muscles' protests, and scrambled to get his sword and shield up. They did, but by then, the Dragonslayer was on him again. The man's spear came in a flurry of swipes and jabs. Solaire swatted one away, took the brunt of another atop his shield, backpedaled to avoid a third, and made to parry a fourth, but was too slow, and the blow struck his arm, nearly falling his

sword from his hand. He clenched his teeth to bite back on the pain and pressed an attack of his own. Ornstein ignored it, opting instead to step into Solaire's body, crane his neck back, and bury the brow of his lion- headed helm into Solaire's own.

A splash of black clouded his vision and his head rang: rang like the bells of the chapel in the Parish when he and the last Chosen had defeated the twin gargoyles atop its roof. It was a queer thought to have in the midst of battle, but Solaire thought it all the same, and was reminded at once of the failed Chosen's hopeful face the last time he'd seen it... before the young man had perished at the hands of Gwyn.

A surge of anger boiled within him, and Solaire let it come. Sometimes in combat it was better to be angry and reckless than calm and cautious. Not often, but sometimes. It took the opponent off guard. He returned Ornstein's headbutt with one of his own, only his attack was to only meant to serve as a distraction. When Ornstein leaned back to avoid it, Solaire feigned anotherstrike with his sword, stepped forward, and drove the actual attack against the Dragonslayer's arm. The point of his blade found the weakness in the man's armor where his gauntlets ended and his chestplate began, and-for the first time-the Dragonslayer cried out as pain must have wracked his arm.

Solaire laid his shield into the man's chest and shoved. Ornstein stumbled back clutching at his arm; the lion's smile looking more like a snarl once more.

"Another blow," Solaire shouted. "Now tell me, Dragonslayer! What happened to the child!"

Ornstein held his arm out. A few trickles of blood spilled to the marble floor. So he is flesh and blood under there, Solaire thought. The Dragonslayer shook the arm in, perhaps, an attempt to forget the pain, and set his helm's eye slits back on Solaire. "The child... to understand what happened to the child, you must first understand what happened to the father."

"Gwyn? What could have possibly happened to the man to-"

"God," Ornstein corrected. "The Lord of Sunlight is no 'man'. He is a God. And that is exactly what most failed to understand, and why He sits now at the Kiln, withering away for a species of ungrateful monsters who have burned his glorious kingdoms to the ground and spread the filthy plague of their kind all across His wonderful lands. The lands He fought for. The lands He won from those infernal dragons and your worthless kind now calls your own."

Solaire considered the knight's words. "Are you telling me Gwyn came to despise humanity? Is that it?"

"Despise is too soft a word for the hatred he has for your kind. His suffering is wasted on the weak and the greedy. It is... a true tragedy."

"I don't understand. What does that have to do with his firstborn son!?"

The Dragonslayer's reply was another charge. His spear lowered, as it had the first time, but when Solaire moved to intercept the blow, Ornstein revealed it was only a feign. He lifted the weapon early, cocked it back, and swung into Solaire's side. Pain flared at his ribs, and Solaire was again lifted from his feet upon the force of the impact. He sailed to his side, glimpsed a pillar rushing forth to meet him, and made to get his shield up. He was not fast enough.

The stone pillar shattered-as the first had-upon impact, and Solaire felt his bones threatening to shatter with it. A fist of pain wrapped him in its embrace and then he was plummeting down into a sea of stone debris. Dust filled his lungs when he made to pull a breath, and he launched into a fit of coughs, each burying a dagger of pure agony into his bruised ribs that grew and grew till he had to squeeze his eyes closed to fight the anguish. Something slid beneath his belly, and before Solaire could react, he was being carried upwards again atop the head of Ornstein's spear.

Out of the debris he came and into the air he went. Below, he could see the lion's-head helm fixated on him as Ornstein carried him in a wide arch above it. His sword fell from his hand as he took the spear's shaft in a two-handed grip and made to pry himself free. Before he could, he was driven back into the ground, now opposed to instead of buried in the remains of the broken pillar.

The pain-fist on his body tightened and Solaire's lungs felt useless in his chest. He got a knee beneath him anyway, just in time to glimpse another blow coming in his periphery and roll out of its path. The spear clipped his boot, but-thankfully-nothing more. He got to his feet and scrambled for his fallen sword, retrieved it, and spun back just in time to deflect Ornstein's jab.

The Dragonslayer, perhaps smelling blood in the air through the snout of his hideous lion's head, pressed a furious assault against Solaire, sending jabs and thrusts and sweeps of his massive spear every which way he could into Solaire's defenses. Solaire was able to deflect a few, but more were landing than being staved away, and he knew without retreating and giving the knight ground, he would lose there and then. He backpedaled, swatting what attacks he could aside, and stole a glance behind him when a moment's respite was afforded. His eyes found a target, and his feet carried him to it.

Ornstein smashed the butt of his spear against the ground, splinters running through the marble underfoot as he did, and used the momentum to carry himself into the air. Solaire was drowned in the darkness of the Dragonslayer's shadow, but it did not matter then: he'd

reached what he was moving for.

The circle of stone that entrenched itself into the chapel's wall and acted as a lift to the hall's upper level slid to his feet, and Solaire stumbled back inside it just as Ornstein's mighty blow sent the room atremble; the spot Solaire had fled shattering beneath its impact. Solaire pressed his back to the wall inside the lift, raised his shield and sword, and watched as the Dragonslayer launched an attack that was-

-vanished as the lift slid back up into the wall, carrying him upwards into the shaft of darkness and saving him from, perhaps, a mortal strike.

As he rose, he caught his breath, checked his wounds for blood (thankfully-and surprisingly-there was very little), and readied himself. Ornstein was no normal warrior, and Solaire doubted he would stand around patiently waiting for the lift to return for him.

The lift halted at the upper balcony, and his thoughts were confirmed: the Dragonslayer had somehow already ascended the climb, and was standing in wait beyond the trim of golden bannister that wrapped the walkways. Solaire stepped out with his sword raised and bowed his head.

"You are as worthy an opponent as the legends tell it, Dragonslayer. I will grant you that."

Ornstein did not return the gesture. "You're going to die soon, old knight, so I will finish my story."

Solaire nodded. "The child... what did Gwyn's growing hatred for humanity have to do with the child?"

"The Lord of Sunlight had three children. The firstborn, who I'll return to, and... the others. You know of them. Most do. Gwyn's infamous 'Dark Sun' and his 'Princess of Sunlight'. The two of them... they were poor excuses to be considered Gwyn's 'successors'. Gwynevere, a lazy, spoiled, unambitious, fool. And Gwyndolin... heh. That 'boy' was more comfortable with a sword stuck in other places than his hand."

"You served him, did you not?" Solaire asked. "The Dark Sun."

"I served him out of loyalty to my Lord, not loyalty to the Dark Sun himself. Gwyndolin, that pathetic man-child, was given an army of hollow... and the fool used it to throw away on your little fortress, the 'Dukes' Archives'. He would have kidnapped your precious Chosen girl, saw her to our Lord, and had her finish him... only to relight the flames at the Kiln and restart a cycle that has ensured his suffering for an eternity!"

Solaire stepped around the bannister, his shield held cautiously to his chest, and fixed the Dragonslayer with a frown. "Abby... he wanted Abby so she could save Lordran?"

"Not save it. Enslave it. And all the while, I had to sit back and obey the fool for his father's sake. But Gwyndolin is no more now. He died at the hands of your 'second' Chosen. A fortuitous turn of events. Now our Lord can finally have his peace... and this cycle can finally reach its end."

"How?"

"Your other Chosen now leads an army of Darkwraith. He will use this power to end our Lord's suffering... and bring about an era of darkness of which he believes he will be the new Lord of. But the boy is a boy, and a boy is always short-sighted. When the dark times come... it is I who will rise against him, slay him, and bring about a new era in Lordran."

Ben leads an army of Darkwraith? Solaire mused, but the words made no sense, and he could only cast them aside.

"The world must plummet to darkness before a new dawn can rise. My Lord's children are no more. It is only I who will stand against the dragons when they return."

"And Gwyn's firstborn?"

The Dragonslayer stepped closer, his spear's tip dragging nonchalantly along behind him. "The irony of the firstborn is that, while Gwyn's far more famous children were utter failures and complete disappointments, it would have been his first son that could have rose to replace him. While Gwyndolin was born with an affinity for the Moon, the firstborn was born with an affinity for the Sun, as his father before him, and he would have made a great God... if he hadn't had one, glaring, flaw that had cost him his throne, his powers, and his family."

Solaire lowered his shield and stared into the lion's eyes. Affinity for the Sun. He looked at his hands.

"Gwyn came to despise humanity... but his firstborn son, still just a naive child, refused to follow his father's heart. The boy loved humans. Cared for them, despite all my Lord, myself, and the rest of his knights and council did to convince him otherwise. He insisted, even at that young age, on helping them, at looking at the creatures as equals instead of the vermin that they were. He spoke only of cooperation... when Gwyn knew the true answer was conquest!"

Solaire lowered his sword and stood before the Dragonslayer with his mouth agape.

"The child had to be dealt with, but my Lord was no murderer of children, let alone his own son. He pulled in the greatest sorcerers Lordran had ever known to do what they could to strip the boy of his power, cleanse his mind of its memories, and when it was done... shipped him off to Astora... to live as an orphan that would never sit the throne Gwyn fought so courageously to obtain."

"The child..." Solaire croaked. "Surely would have died by now. That was... so long ago..."

"The boy was taken in the talons of the great crow. Time distorts in that beast's hold. Might be he's dead... might be he's not. Might be he's still a child, clinging to the crow's feet."

Time distorts, Solaire thought. He curled his hands to fists; hands that he had glimpsed nights earlier and had sworn could not be the hands of a God, yet when he lifted his gaze back to the Dragonslayer, he knew it was true. Somehow, someway, it was true. Abby had the right of it all along. Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight, Lord of Cinder, slayer of dragons, and the lord who'd brought about the end of the beast's dark era... was his father.

"You're not him, old knight," Ornstein said. "You have the presence of a man about you... not a God."

Solaire, a new sense of purpose coursing through him, lifted the tip of his blade across the gap between them. "It doesn't matter what I am. Lordran will never fall to darkness, Dragonslayer. Because I'm going to kill Gwyn, and I'm going to light the flames at the Kiln and save this world from the ruin that threatens it. Raise your spear, friend. Let us put this matter between us to rest. ...and Praise the Sun."

Ornstein's head cocked slightly on its side. The Dragonslayer stared at him a moment, but whatever hints his face might've revealed into the man's thoughts were hidden beneath the snarling lion's helm. After a moment, he raised his speared, nodded, and stepped forward.

Solaire stepped to meet him.

Their weapons raised simultaneously and clashed against one another with such force, the hall rang with the sound of their impact. Ornstein ran his spear in a tight semi-circle to the backside of Solaire's sword and tried hooking it and casting it away. Solaire switched his grip mid-pull, however, and refused him such a tactic. Their weapons still entangled, though, he lowered his shoulder and drove it into the man's chestplate. Ornstein's free hand grabbed for his arm, but Solaire batted it aside with his shield, raised his leg, and kicked the Dragonslayer backwards.

Ornstein stumbled, nearly tumbling over the discarded bonfire laying in the center of the chamber's upper hall, but caught his footing and took up his spear again. Solaire moved in on him. He sent a few jabs to keep the Dragonslayer at bay while he found ground beside the bonfire. Ornstein parried one and sent a riposte hurdling forward. Solaire caught its thrust against his shield, but the velocity of the strike was enough to nearly crack the thing in two. He regained composure and pressed his attack once more, forcing Ornstein to backpedal into the Chamber of the Princess.

Solaire followed after him, slicing and jabbing as he went, and the enormous illusion of (my sister) Gwynevere came towering up over the Dragonslayer's shoulders. Solaire lunged for the knight, his sword held over his head in a two-hand grip, and Ornstein flipped his spear around, holding it longways between his fists to intercept the strike. Solaire's blade landed atop the spear's shaft, and the two struggled briefly in a battle of strength before Ornstein won it, shoved Solare's sword aside, and kicked him in the chest.

Solaire went sliding back along the marble.

The Dragonslayer raised his spear and leapt for him-

-but the backend of the weapon clipped against Gwynevere's chest, and the entire illusion of the Princess of Sunlight wavered and flickered, like a dying candle in a cold wind, and the woman's face blossomed into an expression of horror.

Then she blinked out of existence and the chamber at once went dark.

Solaire rolled from Ornstein's lunge, clambered to his feet, and spun on the knight, sword at the ready. Beside them, however, some clandestine mechanics sounded and took over the room's doors. The big iron-cast things began sliding shut. Solaire's eyes moved from Ornstein, to the doors, and back. The Dragonslayer glanced at the sealing doors himself and-

-Solaire lifted a hand above him, reached for the 'gift' that (my father) Gwyn had, perhaps, failed in taking from him, and found it. Lightning wrapped his arm from elbow to fingertips. Ornstein faced him. Solaire unleashed a spear of lightning into the Dragonslayer's chest, but did not bother waiting around for the result. He rushed for the doors

They nearly sealed shut on top of him, but Solaire twisted his body sideways and slipped through, glancing back to see Ornstein in pursuit, but the doors slammed shut a moment later, and the Dragonslayer vanished between them.

Solaire stepped away from the doors, wary of the things springing back open for the knight within to launch a surprise attack on him, but they did not budge, and after a moment, a clang resounded from the other side. Another boomed, and another shortly after. Ornstein was trapped, but clearly trying desperately to free himself.

Let that prison hold him, Solaire thought, spinning on his heel to return to his friends. For if I have to face the man again... I'm not sure I will survive the fight.

When he at last returned to the Great Chapel's main hall, the room that awaited him was no longer the room he'd ventured through earlier. The pillars were nearly all cracked and crumbling, or vacant all together.

There were massive pockets of splintered marble dotting the floor. The dual sets of stairs that wrapped the sides of the hall were broken apart as well, gaps now residing in the midst of their ascents. And, perhaps, the greatest change of all: at the end of the room, flanked by the doors that spilled back out to Anor Londo, Gwyn's massive and mighty executioner, Smough, towered over Tarkus. The beast of a man was wrapped in a suit of bronze armor, his belly protruding up over his waist like a swollen cloud of metal, and in his hands was gripped a hammer that might've been large enough to shatter Lordran clean in two if given a proper swing.

Solaire descended the stairs conjoining the two rooms, his sword at the ready. As he neared, he spotted Rhea hiding beside a pillar near Tarkus, her talisman clutched in her hands as her lips moved soundlessly in prayer, bathing Tarkus in a golden light that Solaire knew was gifting him stamina. Further ahead, he found Rickert, looming out over the second floor's stone railing with his catalyst in hand. As if on cue, he launched a blue bolt of magic down atop the executioner.

Smough took the spell in his chest, but the massive man only swatted his hand at it, as if pestered by an annoying insect. Tarkus roared a warcry and wrenched his greatsword back over his shoulder. When he rushed the giant, Rhea slipped out from behind the pillar and stayed with him, her light trailing along at his heels as he closed the gap.

Smough thumped his chest, took hold of his hammer, and swung. Tarkus ducked the blow and lunged forward. The tip of his greatsword rammed Smough's giant belly, and the executioner roared in pain. Tarkus made for another strike-

-and the butt of Smough's hammer found his side instead. Tarkus was a big man, well over six-feet tall, but on the receiving end of that force, he looked like a child's playdoll, hurdling through the air sideways and disappearing behind a pillar.

"Tarkus!" Rhea cried, but then the executioner's attention was on her and he was coming. Rhea gasped and backpedaled, but her feet tangled in the hem of her maiden's robes and she spilled to her butt.

Smough quickened his pace; his hammer coming up over his head to smash the priestess to bits.

"Hey you ugly bastard!" Rickert shouted down from the balcony.

When Smough's almost-comically-sized head turned to the young man, Rickert sent another Soul Spear flying into the executioner's face. Smough's neck rocked on its shoulders, and the man stomped his feet furiously.

The attack had bought Solaire enough time to scramble up beside Rhea, take hold of her, and get her on her feet and moving. "Solaire!" She

shouted as they ran back, Smough's thundering footsteps starting up in pursuit. "What happened with the Dragonslayer!? Did you defeat him!?"

"He's indisposed for now," Solaire told her. He led her behind a pillar and the priestess was quick to lean against it and catch her wind. "Are you all alright?"

Rhea nodded. "That giant man and his giant hammer are terrible, Solaire, but we've been managing."

Solaire peeked out from the pillar. Smough had given up on them and turned back to Rickert, who was taunting the executioner from the balcony with a barrage of obscene gestures and remarks. Smough did not seem happy about it. He lurched back his hammer and drove it into the base of the wall, sending Rickert wobbling and nearly tumbling down atop him.

"Rickert, you fool!" Rhea scolded the young man, though her voice was far too distant to reach him. "Solaire, we have to slay that big beast of a man before he brings the whole chapel down us!"

"On that, my lady, we can agree. Come."

They hurried out from behind the pillar and reached the enraged hammer-swinger just as Tarkus was pulling himself up from the ground behind him. "Solaire!" Tarkus greeted, holding a fist to the air between them. "You're just in time to watch me execute and executioner!"

"If it's alright with you, friend, I'd prefer to aid you than watch you!"  
"Aye! Let's take the bastard's little, bastard, head off his big, bastard, body!" "Rickert!" Rhea shouted.

Smough had buried his hammer into the wall again, and this time, Rickert wasn't able to maintain his hold on the bannister. He spilled over its top, his hands darting out to grip the platform's edge at the last moment, leaving his body and legs swaying and swinging below him. Smough eyed them. Smough roared. Smough wrenched back his hammer.

"Hey!" Tarkus bellowed, pulling the giant's attention his way.

With the executioner's back to him, Solaire stepped forward, raised his arm, and focused. He called upon his 'gift' of lightning again, though he'd never managed to will the thing to his aid in such quick succession. Something was different within him, though, perhaps... perhaps a belief that he'd been lacking his entire life. The lightning came, spiraling up his arm and materializing into a spear in his fist. He stepped forth and launched it.

Smough's big, round, body was wrapped up in coil of lightning that

snaked around his legs, his torso, and finally his head. The executioner wailed in agony and his back went stiff as a board. The hammer fell from his grip.

"A weakness," Rhea muttered.

"...yes," Solaire could only croak in reply.

Tarkus did not waste the opportunity. He charged, bounding towards the stunned giant in long strides, and when he neared, he leapt up to the executioner's knees, stood atop them, and drove his sword up and into the man's helm, just below the chin. Smough clawed for the man brining death upon him, but Tarkus elbowed the grasping hands aside, pulled his sword loose, and plunged it upwards again.

This time, Smough did not try to stop him, only lurched backwards, arms pinwheeling briefly, and then crashed to his back; the force of his impact so powerful, the entire chapel shook beneath his weight.

Tarkus pulled his blade loose and stood tall over the fallen executioner.

Above, Rickert had climbed back over the balcony's barrier, and was looming out once again to glimpse the battlefield. His eyes moved from Solaire to Rhea and finally to Rickert and the dead executioner beneath his feet. "Hey, alright!" Rickert cheered, pumping a fist. "You defeated!"

Tarkus lifted his gaze to the young man and raised a brow.

"Him, I mean. You defeated him."

"Thanks in large part to your flailing about up there, Rickert," Tarkus shouted up to him. "You know I couldn't let him crush your puny little legs."

"Hey, I had him," Rickert replied. "I was just... biding my time."

Rhea stepped forth shaking her head. "Rickert! Get down here right now! Are you mad!? You could've killed yourself up there! Come down!"

Rickert sighed. "Yes ma'am."

Tarkus climbed off the fallen Smough, and soon enough the four of them had regrouped at the chapel's entrance.

"What happened with the Dragonslayer?" Tarkus asked.

"He's locked in the Chamber of the Princess for now," Solaire explained. "Let us pray he does not find a way out."

"Well... a dead Dragonslayer is preferable to a trapped one, but it will have to do," Tarkus said. He grinned and clasped Solaire's shoulders. "That lightning of yours... Gods, Solaire, you couldn't have found a better time to

pull that trick out of your sleeve."

"Yes..." Solaire looked to his hands. God's hands, a voice spoke into his mind.

"Are you... alright, Solaire?" Rhea asked.

"Oh, yes, my lady. Fine. I..." He looked to each of their faces in turn. I can't bring this up now, he thought. It will only serve as a distraction. Instead, he focused on the one thing he could bring up. "I spoke briefly with Ornstein. He claims... he claims young Benjamin has somehow gathered an army of Darkwraith for himself."

"An army!?" Rickert snapped. "That's nonsense. Darkwraiths don't serve no one but the Four Kings."

"Perhaps he was mistaken," Rhea suggested. "I mean... how could he know such a thing anyway?"

"Yes... perhaps," Solaire said.

"Well, are we going back then?" Tarkus asked. "We've got the Lordvessel."

"A Lordvessel that is no use to us without souls to fill it with," Solaire corrected. "No. We will pray for those that remain in the Parish, but our mission here is not yet done. Next, we venture back to the Archives... and to the Crystal Caves beyond. Seath the Scaleless, if the beast has returned like so many other of Lordran's beasts, will be waiting with a Lord Soul shard."

Tarkus nodded. "Sounds like a plan then."

"Aye," Rickert agreed. "And if those thumps and bangs I keep hearing back from the Chamber of the Princess are any indication of just how angry you've made our lion-headed friend, I suggest we make haste."

Solaire listened. Faintly, he could hear Ornstein's attempts at breaking out of his prison. "Yes... let us depart at once."

And so they did.

Outside, the clouds had bunched together in a cluster of darkness overhead, and the Sun was falling rapidly in the West. On the rocky cliffs of the horizon, the Duke's Archives stood in wait.

As they traced back their path through the city of Anor Londo, Solaire could not help but return his thoughts to Ornstein's tale of a forsaken God, cast away as a child to live without memory or family in Astora. A child with an affinity for the Sun and with a love in his heart for humanity.

A sadness took him: not for the boy, but for the father. When the Lordvessel was ready to open the path to the Kiln...

...Solaire was coming for him.

Chapter 55

Their camp sprawled from the stone finger that was the sewer underpass leading to the Burg, down past Firelink Shrine, and ended in a maze of tents and wooden constructs joined beside the tombstones that littered the cemetery. It was a large camp for a small force, but Ben had found it necessary all the same. The people complained if they were in too close proximity with his dark pets, as people were wont to do when they'd grown unruly, and so, the Darkwraiths were gathered around the ponds and crumbled stone towers that cluttered the Firelink Shrine, and his subjects were camped in the cemetery; far enough away from that queer, cold, air that swirled about his pets to keep their mouths shut.

Ben walked the length of the camp every day at dawn, sauntering through with his boots hidden beneath the line of the early-morning mists; the mud underfoot sucking at his steps. He liked taking inventory and watching his pets sharpen their black blades and bow subserviently as he passed. More so, he liked watching as the men and women's eyes blossomed with fear as his gaze fell upon them. They were his subjects and he was their Lord, and one day their fear would turn to love, and they would grovel at his feet and worship the ground he walked on in gratitude for what he was going to do for them; for the new world he was going to provide.

He stepped to the muddy cliff that overlooked the cemetery and stared out over the tents with his hands laced at his back. The sun was clawing up over the eastern horizon, bringing pale light and a heavy, damp, texture to the air. He breathed it, letting the coolness swirl in his lungs before puffing it back out in a fog that danced before his lips. I look like a Dragon breathing flames, he thought. The image made him smile.

His eyes swept the path that cut through the center of the tents. His subjects were awakening then, climbing out of their blankets and under the flaps of their makeshift tents to trudge barefoot through the muds, swarming to the longtable he'd had erected for a breakfast of stale bread and dog meat that was treading the thin line between fresh and spoiled. Alas: it was what they had, and so it was what they ate. A few of their eyes flittered nervously to his own atop his overlook, but if Ben held their looks too long, they were quick to drop their heads and shuffle off like scorned dogs. He liked that too.

Ben's own tent loomed over the cemetery grounds on the far hillside. He watched as Pharis ducked beneath its entrance and stretched her arms out wide to her side. She was pretty in the mornings, and her hair looked like flames, glistening under the sun's kiss. She climbed down to the cemetery, shielding her eyes from the drizzling rains, and approached the longtable. Patches was there already. When he spotted her, he ripped the hunk of bread he'd picked out for himself in half and handed it over.

Her lips moved, 'Thanks', but then they turned towards the cliffs that peeked out over the New Londo Ruins below, and Ben could read their conversation no more.

"Chummy, those two, aren't they?"

He didn't need to turn to the man to know the voice belonged to Griggs. The sorcerer was never far from him. He supposed he liked that too. It felt like having a second set of eyes to watch his back. Though no mortal man would dare attempt to strike me down now, he mused.

Griggs fell in at his side. The man was a flood of crimson robes, and Ben glanced sideways to see him peeking out of their hood towards the cemetery. "You know, my Chosen, I had a woman I cared about once. And a friend whom I trusted. They were chummy, too." He faced Ben. "Chummy right up to the day I found them wrapped in each other's embrace in her bedroom."

Ben chortled. "Patches is terrified of me, Griggs. He wouldn't dare go behind my back."

"As similar as they may seem at times, I wouldn't mistake fear for respect, my Chosen."

Ben looked to him.  
"Just a thought, my Chosen," Griggs said. "Just a thought."

Ben didn't care for the way that 'thought' was awakening a heat in his chest, and so he cast it aside. "Are my Darkwraiths ready?"

Griggs smiled that queer smile of his. "My Chosen, your Darkwraith will always be at the ready for you. And the scout you sent to New Londo has returned. The serpents will see you whenever you are ready. If it were me? I'd keep them waiting a bit. Remind them of whom holds the power in Lordran now."

"Yes," Ben said, nodding. "Yes, I think I'll do just that."

"You are wise, my Chosen. As always."

Ben's eyes returned to Patches and Pharis; the former's hand on the latter's arm. Patches said something and Pharis laughed, and the sound of it was daggers in Ben's ears. Chummy, he thought and curled his hand to a fist. "Have my pets ready in fifteen minutes. I'll go to these 'primordial' beasts that lurk in the darkness of New Londo and... deal with them."

"Yes, my Chosen." Griggs bowed, turned, and disappeared around a stone pillar.

Ben pulled his leather gloves down tighter around his fingers and

descended the broken fall of stairs to the cemetery.

At the longtable, Ben stepped forth and the chatter died away at once before his presence, the wide eyes of his subjects peering out at him from the dirty canvases of their faces. He looked to them in turn, drinking in their fear, filling his belly with the delight of it. One child clinging to her mother's skirt stepped warily behind it, leaving only one, long-lashed, eye to peek out at him. Ben grinned at the child, and she cowered back further. "The Darkwraith require these grounds this morning," he spoke, loud and clear so his voice carried into the tents of those whom had not yet risen. "Finish your breakfast and clear out."

"Clear out to where?" An old man with a fleshy scar where his left eye should have been questioned.

"Anywhere. Just not here."

"Are them things going to need the whole cemetery? Do we need to clear out our stuff? How 'bout we stand over there by them stairs?"

Boy, Ben thought. He wants to call you a boy. He wants to question you. Make you look weak in front of your subjects. "Do you want to be thrown from that cliff behind you, old timer? I don't give a damn where you stand, just clear the cliffs or you'll lose your other eye. That meal you're so greedily feasting upon-the lot of you-is a kindness I've provided. But I can take as easy as I can give. Do not question me again."

A smattering of quiet agreement coursed through the crowd.

Rats, that was what Griggs had called them, and looking upon them then, Ben thought it was an apt description. Hungry, unruly, little rats. "Actually, I've changed my mind," he began. "Breakfast is over now. Clear out. Go."

The crowd hesitated only briefly before gathering their half-eaten meals and shuffling off through the mud to disappear back the way Ben had come. When Patches and Pharis made to go with them, Ben raised a hand. "Not you two."

When they were alone, only the grey skies and the drizzling rains beside them, Patches spoke first, "What is it, Ben?"

"Don't call me 'Ben', Patches," he snapped. "Calling me 'Ben' is no better than calling me 'boy'. It's a child's name and I'm no child. You address me as 'my Chosen' or 'my Lord'. Anything else is a spit in my face. Understood?"

Patches stared at him. "Oh, uh... sure. My Chosen. My mistake."  
"Pharis, go back to my tent. You are not to leave till I give you permission."

The woman's face wrinkled with incredulity. "Are you serious? I just woke up! It's the bloody morning! What am I supposed to do in there?"

Unruly little rat. "I gave you an order," Ben said, containing his anger by tightening his fist. "You'd be wise to follow it. Now."

"I didn't do nothing, Ben!" She protested. "I-"

Patches turned to her and shook his head. Her mouth hung open, as if refusing to accept it had to remain silent. She faced Ben, glaring daggers into his eyes, but after a moment, she simply shook her head, spun, and stomped off through the muds to return to his tent.

When she'd gone, Patches ran a hand against the hairless surface of his head. "Gettin' ready to head for them ruins today then, Ben-er, uh, Chosen, huh?"

Ben ignored his question. "Step there, Patches," he said, unsheathing a sword from his hip and pointing the tip to a muddy patch of grass near the cliffside.

Patches raised a brow. "Huh? There?"

"That's right. Stand there."

Patches looked between the spot and Ben twice, scratched his head, and went. When he was standing at the ready, Ben stepped before him and angled the sword straight out, so that the tip came to a gentle rest against the center of Patches' chest.

A reedy, nervous, laughter slipped from the Hyena's lips. "Heh. What, uh... what's going on, Ben, er, Chosen?"

Ben smiled. "Have you ever touched Pharis?"

Patches' expression of nervous confusion melted away at once, replaced by a wide-eyed stare of horror. "What!?"

Ben leaned into the sword a bit, applying pressure to Patches' chest till the bald man had to take a step back, though it was a cautious step: the cliff's edge was less than a foot from his heels. "Have you ever touched her?" Ben kept his voice calm, controlled. "I know the two of you have a playful fondness for one another. Don't forget I was your prisoner atop Sen's Fortress for four days. You said many... suggestive things to one another. So tell me, Patches. Have you ever touched her?"

"B-Ben, I-"

"Chosen," Ben corrected.

"Oh, right, Chosen. Right." That nervous laughter came bubbling up out of his mouth again and Ben grimaced; the sound was pathetic. "I never

touched her. Never. I swear it. She's yours, my Chosen. I would never cross you."

"Do you fear me?"

"Y-yes."

Ben applied more pressure. Patches heel slipped in the mud and a smattering of pebbles rolled back to plummet over the edge. The bald man glanced over his shoulder and the color ran from his cheeks. Ben leaned on him a bit more. "I like being feared, but I'm not so foolish to confuse fear with respect, regardless of how similar they are. If you're lying to me, Patches. I'll know. And I'll hurt you very badly."

"Never!" Patches insisted, desperation in his voice as his arms pinwheeled to keep his balance. "I never touched her! I swear it!"

Ben held his eyes, sniffing out either the honesty or the treachery held within. After a long moment-in which Patches' face grew more and more colorless and the man's breaths came in jagged pulls-Ben lowered the sword and grinned. "Alright, my friend. I believe you."

But Patches' eyes were not held on his own any longer. They were fixated over his shoulder, and the bald man's bottom lip was quivering. Ben turned to face what Patches had.

There lined behind him in a row of black, his Darkwraiths had come. They were watching from the empty pits of their skulled masks' eye holes; their black gauntlets resting at the ready on the hilt of their black swords. Ben was so focused on Patches, he hadn't even noticed until then that the air around them had changed. It was colder, thicker, more lifeless.

He turned back on Patches. "Don't fear them, Hyena. For they are but the fingers of my third hand, and they only close into a fist and destroy when I will them to."

Patches swallowed. "Y-Yes... m-my Chosen."

Ben chuckled. "Lighten up, Patches. Stand loyal beside me and you will never need fear again. Come now. Let's go see our false prophet. This will be a glorious day yet."

Patches stepped away from the cliffside. His boot rolled atop a rock again, shaking his footing, but Ben took hold of him and steadied the man. Patches forced a weak smile and bowed his appreciation, and Ben was taken by the sudden impulse to simply throw him from the cliff and be done with the bald bastard there and then. Patches lowered his gaze submissively, however, and Ben thought, There you go. Be a good Hyena and I will treat you good. But Bad Hyenas, like unruly rats, need to be punished.

With a last glance at his row of silent Darkwraiths, he led Patches off deeper into the cemetery.

At the very end of the garden of dead, a grave awaited; though to call the thing merely a 'grave' was misleading. It was a big, gaping, hole of suffering dug into the earth: eight feet wide by eight feet long by eight feet deep, and when he and Patches stepped to its edge to cast their eyes within it alongside the drizzling rains, Ben's grin widened.

Huddled up in the corner in a pathetic little ball, Abby was shivering against the rains, her bone-thin body clad only in the dirty smallclothes he'd left to her. She was sunken into the muds around her as if they were her filthy blanket, and her head-quite pathetically, Ben thought again-was resting on a rock she was using as a sort of makeshift pillow. Her eyes were closed.

He had just the thing prepared for that problem though. After he'd had his pets dig her prison, he'd had them fill several buckets they brought along from the church with water. Once an hour, he had rotations of subjects come and check on her. If she was sleeping, they were to douse her with one of the buckets; as he intended to then. HIs hands took it by its cylindrical body and Ben stepped nearer to the edge.

"Ben," Patches said, then immediately, "Chosen, I mean."

"...yes?"

Patches scratched at his bald head and shuffled his feet. "Well, it's just... it's just if you truly want the girl alive... you can't keep doing what you're doing. She's just a mortal now. Mortals need to sleep. As far as nourishment... well, you can starve her till the skin wraps her bones, sure, but you're gonna have to make her drink something. Look at her lips. They're turning white."

He looked. They were. Ben sighed. "Have you fallen in love, my Hyena? Perhaps I'll throw you in there to suffer alongside her. Is that what you'd like?"

Patches shook his head. "I'm just sayin', Ben. If you're set on keeping her around till you face off against old Gwyn... you're going to have to put forth a better effort."

Ben considered correcting him on using 'Ben' instead of 'Chosen' again, but he realized then that Patches was but an aging fool, and he supposed you couldn't teach an old hyena new tricks. Instead, his eyes moved back to Abby and he grimaced. "Alright, Patches... you care about her so much? You're her new babysitter. Keep her alive, but barely. If she dies... I will hold you personally responsible."

"But-"

"Don't ever question me," Ben cut him short. He leaned over the grave and emptied half the buckets contents into a little pocket in the corner opposite Abby. It pooled in a circle of muddy water. The rest of the water he cocked back and unleashed in a splash across the pathetic girl's pathetic body.

Abby woke gasping for air and clawing blindly at whatever demon she was imaging the water was. She made to stand and scramble into the grave's corner, but her heel slipped in the mud and she fell back to the ground. Her head smacked against her 'pillow' of rock and she cradled the wound at once, wincing.

Ben's grin widened. "Were you having a pleasant dream down there, Abby?"

Her eyes-wide and filled with just-woken confusion-lifted to his own as she gasped for air and pulled her bloodied hand away from her temple. She swallowed, looked between Patches and himself, but said nothing.

Ben didn't mind. He wasn't particularly looking for conversation anyway. He pointed to the muddy circle of water opposite her. "Cup your hands together and drink from that."

She looked to the water. Blinked. Back to him.

Ben sighed. "Drink the damn water or I'll send one of my dark pets down there to cut the tips off all your pretty little fingers." That had been Griggs' suggestion (though Griggs had also wanted her eyes and tongue removed if Ben was insistent on keeping her alive) on the first night they'd captured her, so that she'd never be able to hold a dagger again after attempting to take his life with one. It was a bit gruesome for Ben's tastes, however, and he thought the eight-foot deep hole sufficed. If she was going to be an unruly little rat, though...

Abby swiped dirty hair from her dirty brow and-to Ben's great satisfaction-crawled the length of the grave to the pool of water. She knelt before it, staring into the muddy surface. There were already insects and chunks of fallen dirt floating about like the top of one of Andre's stews. Abby leaned forth, cupped handfuls of the filthy stuff anyway, and tipped it back into her cracked lips. She swallowed greedily and went back for another.

"You see, Patches," Ben said. "She's fine. Even after all this time and witnessing all her little rat-friends I've killed perish... she still wants to go on. That's good. There is no suffering without hope." He looked down at her. "You keep on hoping, Abby. Hope that someday you'll see the outside of that grave. And you remember this above all... that you're down there because I'm better than you. And I always have been." He grimaced. "Now drink your filthy water."

Back through the cemetery they went, Patches trudging behind him with a somber look on his face. The Darkwraiths were in position then, lined up in a black row that stretched from one end of the cliff overlooking New Londo to the next. Ben took note of the way the damp grass beneath their boot's was withering and dying. And there shall far more death today than that.

At the Firelink Shrine, past the bonfire and atop the jut of earth that poked out beneath it, Griggs and two men stood at the flanks of a barrel.

"Is this ready?" Ben asked when he'd neared, dropping to a knee and running his hand over the smooth, wooden, surface.

"It is, my Chosen," Griggs answered. "Enchanted?"  
"Yes, my Chosen."  
"And you're sure there will be enough?" "Most certainly, my Chosen."

Ben rose and nodded. He turned on Patches. "Make yourself useful, Hyena. Carry that big barrel alongside me to New Londo." He clasped the bald man's shoulder. "We have serpents to deal with on this day."

They took the only path worth taking: the twist of ancient stairs that spiraled down along the cliff in a long curve before depositing them into a lift that carried through a shaft of earth to the the ruins below. When they'd stepped inside the small room and Ben activated the circle of stone that served as the pulley-system's lever, Patches spoke into the quietness, "Ben, er Chosen, we're going down here alone?"

Ben chuckled. "That's right."

"And... you don't think that's a bit risky? I mean, they say these Primordial beasts are as old as Lordran itself. Who knows what kind of serpent's tricks they may hold up their serpent's sleeves."

Ben glanced sideways. "Are you afraid, Patches?" He shrugged. "Well, yeah. Guess I am."

"I told you the only thing left in Lordran worth fearing is me. You're on my side, aren't you?"

"Well, sure I am, Ben."

"Then have no fears. These things are nothing but overgrown serpents, but I assure you they are serpents all the same. And like all snakes, they need to know their place. Beneath our boots, slithering in the grass,

staying out of our way. Besides, this was Griggs' plan, and the man's genius has not failed me yet."

"Yeah, Griggs..." Patches muttered.

"If you have something to say, say it now, Patches. These quiet moments are far and few in Lordran these days. You might not get another chance."

"It's just... didn't you ever get kind of like a queer feeling about that man? I know he's smart and all that, and I know he got you out of the cell back at the church-"

"Yes. Freed me while you and Pharis had left me to rot," Ben added. "I haven't forgotten it. I'm glad you haven't either."

"It wasn't our fault! We didn't have no key! We threatened Abby, Ben, what else could we have done!?"

Unruly little rat. Ben forced a smile. "Nothing, friend. It's alright."

"I'm just sayin'... a man like that Griggs fellow... it's usually best to keep one eye on them at all times."

Griggs' had warned him that Patches would try and drive a separation between them if they grew too close. As per usual, he had been spot on. Still, Ben wore his smile. It was better to let a man think he was helping you, even if he wasn't. It bought loyalty. Griggs had told him that too. "Thank you, Patches. I will... consider your words."

The lift slid to a grinding halt and revealed an arched passage. Ben led the way beneath it, and then they were twisting down another flight of stairs. At the base, the path opened on a wide, dark, hillside of damp grass and muddy patches of land. It sloped down and around and ended at the entrance to the docks. He and Patches followed it, the latter having to halt occasionally to fix his grip on Griggs' barrel.

They came upon a circle of earth that gave way to the long and narrow passage of warped wood that served as New Londo's entrance. Past the murky waters that twinkled and danced beneath the rains and beyond the jagged fingers of stone poking up along the ruins' face, Ben spotted ancient stone towers and buildings, all crumbled and broken and decaying, lined along the horizon. He knew beyond them... the Four Kings and their precious Bequeathed Lord Soul shard awaited.

The wind had a chill to it, carrying the faint scent of death in its embrace, but Ben kept the company of Darkwraith, and so coldness and death were old friends of his. Patches, however, was shaking. Ben laughed. "Put that damn barrel down before you spill it."

Patches did. When he stood again, his legs looked like rubber twigs poking out from his waist, threatening to buckle. "What now?"

"Now," Ben began, taking preemptive delight in what his words would do to the Hyena, "you head in there and fetch me a few serpents."

Patches spun on him, his face the color of spoiled milk. "Me? Alone?" "That's right."  
"B-B-But-"

"Tell them I'm too important and too cautious to enter their domain myself," Ben explained. "Tell them I insist upon meeting them here at the ruins' edge. Tell them... tell them I am eager to meet and cooperate with them, and together I hope to carve a new era of darkness for Lordran to thrive in with them at my side. Can you remember all that?"

Patches' lip was quivering.

"Patches? Can you remember it or not? If not, perhaps your use has run out on me..." He laid his hand on the hilt of his sword.

"I c-can remember, Ben," Patches stammered.

"Good. Then go."

With hesitancy, he went. Ben watched the Hyena scurry off across the docks' planks, take the curve at the midway point, and disappear shortly after behind a jut of stone. Ben sat himself atop Griggs' barrel and folded his arms across his chest to wait. As he did, he thought of the future, and the triumph it would bring. When his business with the serpents was concluded, he would obtain the first soul shard shortly after from the Kings. Then he'd send his pets down into Nito's domain and have them retrieve the second. After that? It would only be a waiting game. Solaire and the rats he'd brought with him would bring him both the Lordvessel and-with luck-the third shard from Seath the Scaleless.

Then you will return to me, Lautrec, he thought, the image of the golden bastard handing over the final missing soul shard standing between Ben and his Dark Lordship filling him with a profound satisfaction. And you will suffer and watch, as Abby does now, when my reign begins. Then you'll die, like your sister before you. And the witch... the witch will be another sort of 'pet' of mine.

He was taking great joy in the idea of both Pharis and Quelana warming his bed at night when Patches came hurrying back through the darkness of the ruins. He stood and awaited the Hyena's approach.

"Well?"

Patches nodded, catching his breath. "They'll come." He leaned over his knees, gasping. "They'll come, Ben, but... Gods, they're big bastards them things."

"Big snakes, small snakes... they don't frighten me. How many are there?"

"Lots."

In that regard, Patches had the right of it. Behind the bald man's shoulder, Ben saw movement in the dark waters, and quickly shoved the Hyena aside to stand at the docks' entrance in wait. He watched them come, slithering beneath the inky surface of the lake like the veins of Lordran itself, throbbing and pulsing as they carried blood to his feet. He counted their numbers: four, six, eight, ten. Ten primordial monsters, coming forth for him, yet the only thing Ben felt was a strange sense of calm. He glanced to the cliffs of the Firelink Shrine behind him. His dark pets were dark silhouettes standing in wait along the cliffside.

Water broke in a sharp crack that resounded through the lake and the ruins beyond in queer echoes. He turned to face the beasts as they rose from the waters, like great, leathery, tree trunks blooming up from a forest bed. They rose and rose, and then they rose some more, and by the time they stopped rising, both Ben and Patches were drowned in their shadows; the serpents hovering around them in a circle over ten feet in the air. Their heads were big, bulbous, swaying things that housed slitted red eyes and mouths that were eerily human-like; rows of flattened teeth jutting out, slick with saliva.

Patches whimpered at his side and Ben cast a dark look his way. "Go then, you coward. Go wait on the hillside."

Patches did not need to be told twice. He hurried off at once.

"Chosen," one of them hissed at his side, and Ben turned to face the monster. It smiled. "We have awaited you for a long time."

"Oh?"

"Yes, Chosen," another spoke from further back. They were lined on either side of the docks' pier in sets of five. "Too long. We are grateful that you have finally come to us."

"And why is that?" Ben questioned.  
"We wish only to see you succeed," a third piped up. "Yes, your success... imminent," another added. "The Kiln awaits."  
"As does Gwyn."  
"And then Gwyn will persih."  
"And then Lordran will belong to its Dark Lord."

"The Dark Lord is you, Chosen." "You, our Chosen. Only you."

Ben's eyes darted between them as they spoke in turn. His gaze held on a large one near to him. "You. What's your name?"

"They call me 'Darkstalker', my Chosen. Kaathe was my Primordial name." Ben nodded. He faced another. "And you?"  
"Frampt, my Chosen. They call me Frampt."

"Kaathe and Frampt..." Ben muttered, sweeping his eyes over the rest of the things. Just as Griggs foretold. "I have brought you a present today." He lowered to a knee and patted the barrel at his feet. "I was told that a good Lord always comes bearing gifts."

"Gift? A kindness, our Chosen."

"We are not worthy of such a kind Lord."

"Our gift, we hope you enjoy."

"Your gift?" Ben asked, removing the barrel's lid. The smell from within leapt into his nose at once, a thick, pungent, burning thing.

"The Darkwraiths."

"We had a man set them loose so that they would be yours."

"To ensure your success."

"Though, your success, Chosen, was a thing of destiny. You hardly needed our aid."

"We are but humble servants and you are a wise Chosen." "A good Chosen."  
"A true Chosen."  
"A powerful Chosen."

Ben grimaced. Their sycophancy was mixing with the barrel's odor, and the combination was enough to turn his stomach. He got his hands laced in the barrel's handholds and hoisted it up against his belly as he rose to his feet. He looked to each of the beasts in turn. They were ugly and deceptive things, and an anger was burning in his chest then. He did not wish to stand beneath their longing gaze any more, and so he readied the barrel and walked the length of the pier.

"My present to you, Primordial Serpents," he said, forcing a smile upon

them. "I bring you man's greatest gift."

He lurched the barrel forth, sending some of the liquid contents out to wash the nearest serpent's body. The thing recoiled a bit and its massive nostrils sniff shrewdly at the air. Ben ignored it, moved to the next creature, and doused itthe same way.

One by one he went, hurling the liquid over their writhing, leathery, bodies, ignoring their inquiries, and by the time he'd reached the last, the barrel was empty. Griggs was right again. Just enough for the ten of them.

"Chosen, one must wonder... what gift is this foul-smelling liquid you bring to us?"

Ben stepped back to the front of the pier. He lifted his gaze to the question-asker, Kaathe, and smiled. "I told you. It is man's greatest gift. And soon it will be yours." He nodded, sweeping his eyes across the things. "I understand you wish allegiance between man and serpent in the new era of Lordran that I am about to awaken. I understand you call yourself 'servants' and that you wish only to aid me and see me become a great Dark Lord. Is that the right of it?"

"Yes, Chosen."  
"Of course, Chosen."  
"Our lives are servitude, Chosen."  
"And you are now our master."  
Ben nodded. "I hear your offer. And I deny it."

A wave of confusion plastered the creatures' hideous faces. Their speech patterns had been so perfectly synchronized with one another, but now, they had descended to chaos. They spoke all at once, sending a flood of noise down upon Ben. Ben waited till it ceased, then spoke in return.

"There will be no allegiance between man and serpent in the new world. You are foul, deceptive, creatures, and I am sending you souls back to rot in Izalith." He spread his fingers and raised his arm high: high enough for his pets atop the cliffside to glimpse. "And the gift I bring you is death."

He closed his hand to a fist.

Faintly he could hear the sound of a dozen arrows being loosed from a dozen bows clutched in the hands of a dozen, dark, archers. Both Kaathe and Frampt lifted their slitted eyes to the cliffside, and within the reflective surfaces, Ben saw their doom coming for them: a line of fire, hurdling through the skies in a barrage of red death.

One of the things screamed an ancient and guttural noise-

-but the flaming arrow stuck its body before it could move.

The oil Ben had doused it in caught at once, and the serpent became a flaming pillar of agony, twisting and writhing and screaming the most shrill, terrible, scream he'd ever heard. The other nine were not far behind it, their bodies taking on new deformities as the flaming shafts sunk their teeth in. At once, all ten-the fires cast from their bodies now so bright, it illuminated the entire lake in a shower of red and orange- plunged for the water.

But Griggs' enchantment held. The sorcery he'd cast upon the oil refused the flames to be quelled so easily, and a moment later, they all came screaming back up to the surface, their burning bodies even worse than when they'd descended. Their bulbous heads lashed about the tops of the flames, like dandelions swaying in a summer breeze, and their mouths gaped open to unleash a symphony of pain and suffering. The stench emanating from their leathery flesh was enough to gag him, and Ben stepped back from the pier, coughing and gasping for air.

The serpents began slamming into one another in a frenzied panic, but there was no relief to be found in the desperate act. They burned on and on, desperate to save their pathetic lives in any way they could, but after a time, the thrashing waned, slowed, and halted entirely. Then the lake became a massive, liquid, grave as ten primordial serpents-perhaps as old as Lordran itself-lay floating atop it, dead; their corpses burning on, sending pillars of black and foul smoke reaching for the skies.

Ben faced Patches. The bald man's eyes were bulging from his head as the flames' reflection danced within them. Ben chuckled. "Snakes are snakes. I told you, didn't I? Now they know their place." He looked to the cliffside. His dark pets were there, and they had served him well. He stepped forth, cupping his hands around his mouth, and shouted up, "Come now, my knights! Come to me! COME!"

And one by one, they disappeared.

He trudged back up the muddy hillside with Patches trailing along beside him. They crested it and waited and soon enough, the stone archway leading back to the lift was pouring out a horde of darkness. The wraiths filtered around the two of them-Patches' lip quivering again as he watched them pass-and took up stance in a row upon the hill. A moment later, when the lift had raised and returned, more came. A few moments later: more.

When it was done, there were over three dozen standing at the ready; their black boots sunken into the muds around them; their hollowed eyes peeking out from masks that revealed nothing. Ben was atop the hill, looking over them, and he'd never felt so much power in his life. He could not keep the smile from his face as he raised his arm alongside his voice, "My pets! You have served me well! But now the truest test of your loyalty

lies before you!"

He walked to the edge of the hill and pointed out over the lake, where the dead serpent's flames still illuminated the path. "There lies your next destination! You are to cross into the ruins of New Londo, and beyond, you're to traverse the abyss. Within, you will find the Kings you once served, the Kings you once loved, the Kings whose loyalty you pledged so devoutly, when the abyss took them, you followed them into whatever nightmarish existence they became!

"Now you are to slaughter them! Slaughter them and bring me their heads alongside the souls shard they keep. Lay the shard in my hands and the heads at my feet... and I will know where your true allegiance lies. Go, now, my pets! Go and destroy! GO!"

At once, they went, and again Ben was overwhelmed with the thrill of such power. They flooded down to the pier, narrowed off to cross the wooden planks into New Londo, and slipped behind the jagged stone teeth that were the fallen city's entrance.

There was blood pumping in his chest and in his arms and other places, and all at once, he desired Pharis. He turned, nodded for Patches to follow along, and made to return to camp.

At the Firelink bonfire, Griggs stood in wait. The man beneath the crimson hood smiled his queer smile and bowed his head but spoke no words. Ben was thankful for that. There weren't always words worth speaking in life's little accomplishments, and he was itching to get back to his tent.

He left Patches' company, descended into the graveyard, and climbed up the short cliffside to enter his tent, looming out over the rest of them like a flag of victory.

Pharis was there. She was seated on the edge of his bed, a scowl on her face that, somehow, made her prettier to him. She glowered up at him as he approached and shook her head. "What are you grinning about?"

"Am I grinning?" He asked. "I hadn't noticed. Take your clothes off." "What?"

He kicked the boots from his feet and slid his jerking down around his arms. "You heard me."

"Are you mad!?" Pharis asked. "After you humiliated me before? You think me a whore?"

Ben sighed. "Pharis.. I have to treat you like that out there."

"Have to, huh?" Her glare grew more intense. "You've got some damned nerve, Ben."

"If I treat you like I treat you in here, it would be revealing a massive weakness to my foes. If they know I care for you... you become a target. And don't assume because those men and women out there bow their heads when I pass them that they have forgotten I burned their precious church to the ground and killed Andre and the rest of them. There are those who would seek to destroy me for that. That's fine. I won't have you destroyed, though. Not you." He held her eyes and watched the fire die in them as her look softened. "Now take off your damn clothes. I feel more alive right now then I ever have."

He moved to their crate of supplies and stripped the gloves from his hands, the breeches from his legs, and the tunic from his chest. When he turned back, Pharis' clothes were in a little pile on the floor, and the woman was wrapped in a blanket atop the bed, her fire-kissed hair freed from its usual pigtails and laying beside her milky shoulders in soft waves. Ben grinned, nodded, and joined her.

His hands ran through her hair and steadied her head long enough for his lips to find her own. She pulled away at once. "If I'm to believe your words about treating me the way you treat me," she said, laying a hand on his bare chest to halt his attempts at kissing her, "then I need to hear other words, Ben."

Ben laughed. "Oh? And what words are those? You're talking to a future Lord now, don't forget. And I suppose I'm talking to a future Queen."

The title did not impress her. She stared into his eyes, running her hands along his cheek. "Do you love me, Ben? Or do you only desire my flesh? Tell it true."

"I love you," he lied, pushed her hand aside, and joined her beneath the blankets.

-o-o-o-

After, they lay beside one another in bed, hands laced together, Pharis' chin resting on his bare chest as she stared up at him. There was a smile on her face then, as there often was when they were done, and Ben had the queer thought come to him that he actually preferred the scowl. She kissed at his chest and he closed his eyes.

A moment later, Patches' voice came from outside, "Ben? Er, Chosen?" "What is it, Patches?"  
"...they've returned."

He sat at once, Pharis' head rolling from his chest. He took her by the chin, kissed her lips, and dressed. She watched him, that satisfied smile never leaving her face.

Outside, the rains had picked up and the sky had greyed considerably since morning. Ben stepped to the edge of the raised bit of earth his tent reside upon and looked to the cemetery.

His Darkwraiths were there, crowded in a large, black, circle in the cemetery's clearing, each of them lowered to one knee with their heads bowed subserviently. Between them and him, four severed heads of four dead kings: crowns atop their brows; long, bristly, hair flowing out from beneath; mouths gaped in horror.

Ben surged with excitement. He hopped down to the cemetery at once and closed a fist around one of the severed head's mane of hair. He lifted the thing till its face was in line with his own and barked laughter into it. When he lowered it and looked out over the sea of his black army, a rush of power coursed within him. "You have served me beyond expectation, my pets! You have proven your loyalty, and reserved a high rank in my new kingdom when I rule as Dark Lord!"

The things were as silent and reticent as always, but Ben could not keep the smile from his face anyway. Behind them, Griggs stood with something aglow in his hands. The Lord Soul shard, Ben realized and nodded at his friend. His eyes floated to Abby's grave then and a wonderful idea took him. He crossed to it, stepped to the edge, and tossed the severed King's head down beside her. It landed at her feet and Abby, who'd been half-dozing, looked at it and screamed.

But Ben's laughter drowned her out.

Not much later, he returned to his tent, filled with the thrill of victory, and crawled atop Pharis before she could so much as question him. He slipped beneath the blankets and took hold of her.

Their lips met, and neither left the tent for a long, long, time.

Chapter 56

His feet tangled in a tuft of snow, the ice beneath far too slick to allow him to recover from such an error, and so Lautrec fell. He'd been falling a lot, but that one hurt. He twisted his body to protect the lifeless thing he carried in his arms and took the brunt of the force on his side; a fresh dusting of frost leaping up from the impact to clog his nose and eyes. All at once, the three gaping holes in his body that he'd pried Laurentius' crossbow bolts from screamed in a symphony of pure agony, and Lautrec thought-as he'd thought on the previous two falls-that his mind was going to take the plummet into that dark void that had been reaching for it. His consciousness was a clumsy man on a thin wire, and it was only a matter of time before it slipped. Then, likely, they'd both freeze to death.

He winced and got a knee beneath him, burying it into the snow to steady himself as he rose. The heavy blanket that he'd salvaged from Laurentius' supply bag was dusted with frost, and he was quick to swipe it away. Within, bundled up as tight as he could bundle her up without fearing to choke off her air supply, Quelana slept. At least, he hoped she slept. Her face was far more pallid than it should have been, and her breath came so shallow, it might just as well have been not coming at all. His fingers found the edges of the blanket that hugged her neck and face and pulled them a bit tighter around her. She did not stir.

Pain raced up his wounded leg, through his wounded chest, and into his wounded shoulder, and Lautrec nearly collapsed again. He ground his teeth together and only dropped to a knee instead, though; waiting with his limbs trembling till the pain passed. After a long moment of suffering, it did, but the cost of his little 'pain flares' was growing more and more evident: sooner or later, he was going to fall, and then he was going to close his eyes, and then he was going to die.

Wind swept the barren tundra that was Lost Izalith, and its icy grip wrapped him and squeezed, threatening to shut his eyes alongside his mind. He growled a protest, clambered to his feet, and denied it. He wobbled beneath both Quelana's weight in his arms and his own damned golden armor, but refused the wind to do anymore. If that is a challenge, he thought, forcing his feet to start moving again, than I accept.

Izalith was awash in white: white ice, white snow, white rocks, white stone. There was even a soft blizzard raining from the cracks that lined the thing's belly overhead, further washing the world in a blanket of oppressive, suffocating, white. Lautrec had no idea what direction he was heading, or even what he was heading for. He only knew that back was death, and so he moved forward; or at least what half-blind direction he hoped was forward. And to what end? An inner voice questioned before he could silence it, but he cast the thought aside at once. Thoughts like that would only serve to help that man on the wire in his head slip and

fall into darkness. He kept moving.

The earth underfoot groaned like an ancient beast waking from deep slumber and another wind swept pure ice across the plains of nothingness that encased them. It was so damned cold, Lautrec was sure that if Quelana did not wake soon with her gift of flame, their lungs would simply freeze in their chests and cease working. If she wakes at all. Again, he shut that morbid voice up inside his head. Just move. One foot after the other. Forward. Forward, because back is death.

Deeper they went. Lautrec could spot big stone constructs poking up beyond the sheet of swirling snow that kept the path obscured and shifting, but when he approached it-head down, hand up shielding his brow: the only way to keep his eyes from being pecked out by the fingers of reaching ice-it had disappeared. Or perhaps moved.

Wind came so loud in his ear, it was if Izalith itself was sending a whisper of grating laughter upon him: We fooled you, Lautrec. Fooled you fooled you fooled you. His hand fell instinctively for his shotel, but there were some foes that could not be so easily defeated. Some foes, like the madness he knew then was threatening his mind, required a different sort of tactic. He squeezed his eyes shut, fought off a fit of coughs that left the acrid taste of blood on the back of his throat, and opened them again. The wind had stopped whispering and the falling snows had slowed. Whatever structure he'd been heading for was still missing, but at least then he was able to rationalize it as, perhaps, getting turned or twisted in the blizzard. He stole a glance at Quelana (pallid, still, lifeless), hugged her tighter to his chest, and pressed on. Because back is death.

He soldiered on that way for quite some time. The snows came ebbing and flowing around him like tides upon a beach. At their worst, he was blind, deaf, and moved at a crawl. At their best, he was blind, deaf, and moved at a slightly faster crawl. Quelana's limp body was growing heavier with every arduous step through the storm, and his wounds were screaming something fierce and weeping blood that dampened the leathers and cloths beneath his armor. His legs had crossed the line between 'tired' and 'exhausted', and with each close of his eyes, he felt the ice wanting to freeze them over and seal them shut forever.

He came upon a finger of stone jutting out of a small lake of ice and rested upon it long enough to cough into his hand. When he pulled it away, the gold of his gauntlet was stained with the crimson of his blood. A bad thing, he thought, pushed himself off the stone, and kept going.

At some point, his eyes did close, and when he opened them again, it was only because his feet had tangled in a thick cluster of frosted snows mounding up out of the ice. He spilled atop the mound, twisting as he had on each previous fall to protect Quelana from the impact. A knight's instincts, he thought with a bark of mirthless laughter. Always protect the fair maiden.

The snow beneath him was soft and white like a pillow. It was cold, sure, most things in Izalith were, but when he rested his cheek against it, it felt warm-inviting-and he found himself letting his eyes slide shut again. Just a rest, a part of him pleaded to another part. Just a short rest of my eyes... then... then we go on.... short rest.... short...

A clumsy man on a thin wire wavered, flailed, and slipped in his mind. Tap tap tap  
Distant sound; reaching out of the cavernous darkness to pester him. Tap tap tap

Either it was madness knocking on the window of his mind, or death knocking of the door of his body. Either way: he ignored it.

Tap tap tap

Lautrec's eyes flittered open. They landed upon the ice at his feet, where his dead sister was staring up from under the lake at him, rapping her knuckles against the surface: white eyes bleeding trails of tears upon her decaying cheeks.

He shouted then and twisted so violently, the bundle of blankets and robes that was Quelana spilled from his arms to roll into the snow, and Lautrec himself fell to his ass, all the air in his lungs leaving him in one, great, gasp. His eyes widened maddeningly on that patch of ice where Ana had been, but nothing remained but a swirl of dark, blue, water. He laughed again. The sound was so queer and flat and foreign in his ears, it awoke a realization in him at once: I have to move. Because back is death, but so is remaining still. Forward. Only forward. Move, you fool. Move now.

He did, albeit with some difficulty. He used the snow-mound to claw his way back to his feet and went to Quelana at once. Her eyes were closed. There were little trails of icicles forming on her long lashes. Lautrec swiped them away. He got his arms under her body (corpse) and lifted. The witch had somehow gained a thousand pounds, though, and his back protested by turning to a stiff board of pain. He grit his teeth and lifted her anyway and then his legs were moving again; his boots kicking and stomping through the snow that sought to keep them in place so that his heart could freeze in his chest.

A bit further on, the blizzard raining from the cracks overhead worsened, pulling his cone of vision in to a mere few feet before him. Lautrec lifted a gauntlet to his brow and squinted against the bits of snow and ice slapping at his cheeks. He saw faint, dark, silhouettes of stone beyond the sheet of white and little else. He was readying to head for them when something caught in his periphery. His eyes darted sideways and found Anastacia again, only this time, she wasn't under the ice, but standing atop it. She

was waving at him.

He blinked and she was gone.

Lautrec found himself thinking at once of Havel the Rock: the mad bishop he'd killed atop Sen's Fortress. He wondered if Havel had seen flashes of dead family members standing in the snows before the man's mind shattered and he tore his own eyes from his head. Lautrec rather liked his eyes. He didn't particularly want to remove them from their sockets.

He pushed on, now heading in the direction he'd seen Ana. The going was slow dwindling to slower as the blizzard thickened, and by the time he reached the spot he believed she'd been standing, there wasn't a thing left to see but a shower of ice pouring down over his vision.

Lautrec was readying to turn back when he felt the snow underfoot tremble. At first, he wondered if the feeling had simply been the next stage of madness settling into his frost-encrusted mind. Then he saw the rumbling's source.

He lowered to the ground at once, carefully laying Quelana beneath him and covering her with his body. The snows continued raining atop them, and Lautrec could only hope they would be buried sooner rather than later: a Taurus Demon was stomping its way right towards them.

Thank you, Ana, he thought bitterly. You've led me to my death.

The tower of fur was nothing but a vague shape-ghostly behind the veil of snows-and red eyes, and as it lumbered forth, shaking the foundation of Izalith itself as it came, Lautrec saw the thing's massive greataxe trailing alongside it, cutting a trench in the ice. It looked sharp.

Slowly, as to not draw the thing's eye his way, he ran his arm down the length of his side. His hand reached for his hip. His fingers closed around the hilt of one of his shotels. His eyes held steady on the approaching monster. He focused.

The beast lurched forth through the blizzard and broke the veil that had been obscuring it, turning the furry, vague, shapes into furry, defined, shapes, and at once, the beast halted; its monstrous nostrils sniffing at the air.

Lautrec lied not five feet before it, watching.

The demon's head cocked on its side and it sniffed again. Its clawed hands tightened around its greataxe. A trail of drool pooled then slipped from within its fangs and landed before Lautrec's chin. Lautrec looked at it grimacing: it smelled foul. When Lautrec lifted his eyes back to the beast-

-it was staring at him.

The creature's roar deafened him as the demon lifted its greataxe. Lautrec rose with his own weapon drawn, however, and for one brief moment, the two stood in defiance of one another: Lautrec smaller but armored; the beast massive... but vulnerable.

It swung-

-and he leapt into the swing, got his boots atop the demon's knees, and took his shotel upwards in a two-handed grip. The blade sunk into the monster's fur just above its chest, and Lautrec ripped upwards. The demon's throat split in halves, showering him in a fresh fall of black blood. It screeched once, briefly, and then was falling backwards, Lautrec riding it back down to the snows where it smacked against the ice and went still.

The thing was dead long before it landed.

Lautrec rolled off its chest, and when he hit the snows-the brief shot of adrenaline combat had provided already fading-his wounds screamed, reminding him they were very much still there and very much still killing him. He threw his head back and roared, a sound not dissimilar from the fallen demon's earlier, and grabbed for his shoulder. His hand came away with more blood than he thought he might've had left. He groaned and laid his head back against the snow. It was damned cold on his neck, but beside him, the dead Taurus Demon was emanating a bit of warmth that felt good upon his cheek. His eyes flicked to the furry bastard. A thought crossed his mind.

He got to his feet, using fistfuls of the dead beast's fur beside him to aid his ascent, and went to check on Quelana. She was as still and pallid as ever, but he thought he could see her chest rising and falling somewhere beneath her cocoon of blankets, and-for then-it was good enough to ease his mind. He unsheathed his second shotel, moved around to the side of the fallen demon, got his shoulder (the good one) under the thing's belly, and shoved.

It didn't particularly seem like it wanted to move, but Lautrec dug his heels in the snow, ignored the pain flaring from his trio of wounds, and after some effort, rolled the big bastard on its side.

"Alright..." He muttered to no one, took a breath, and raised his blades.

He hacked into the monster's belly, tearing it open and spilling out a flood of bloody entrails that pooled around his golden boots. He grimaced, cut the whole wider, and came away holding his nose. And he'd thought the things smelled bad on the outside. His eyes moved to Quelana. Sorry about this, he thought, bending to scoop her into his arms again. He carried her to the thing's side, lowered to his knees, and laid them beside the exposed wound in its belly, writhing his way back into it so that its innards were draped over them like a blanket.

The heat pouring out from within was simultaneously the worst and most wonderful thing he'd ever felt. Izalith may have been a frozen wasteland, but there, lying in the last bit of warmth of a dying demon, it had come back to life.

Lautrec pulled Quelana close. She just needs the heat, he thought. The damned pyromancer dragged her into a frozen lake. The heat will bring her back. The heat will... bring... He felt that inner-wire-walker in his head slipping again. He opened his mouth to warn the poor bastard, but then the man did slip and Lautrec's consciousness slipped with him.

-o-o-o-

Tap tap tap

His dreams were as empty as Izalith, and when next he opened his eyes, Lautrec felt at once that whatever warmth had clung to the Taurus Demon's innards was long gone, and they were beginning to freeze again. He leaned over the bundled blanket in his arms and checked on Quelana. She was as still and serene as a Carim pond, but the color had further drained from her cheeks, and there was ice gathering on her lips and eyes and nose again. Lautrec breathed into his hands, rubbed them together, and cleaned her face off. Her skin beneath his palms moved without protest. It felt like the skin of a dead person.

And what if she is dead? He questioned. What then? Where do I go? What do I do? He considered it a moment before coming to the realization that if she was dead, he'd likely lie down and wait to die himself. There was nothing else anymore. His adult life had been spent in vengeful pursuit of a sister that-when he found her-could not even bring himself to kill. And now something or someone else had stolen her life from her instead. Carim and the friends and family it had once provided was all but a tarnished, fading, memory in his head, lost, as Izalith was, behind a suffocating veil of white emptiness. And Lordran... Lordran's future was now in the hands of Solaire and Abby and the rest of them. He had no importance. Someone else could come retrieve the damned precious Lord Soul shard, and quite honestly - he didn't much care for the idea of a Lordran without the witch in it anyway.

The notion that he had allowed his life be tied so crucially to another flooded him with an anger, but when his eyes drifted back to Quelana, it fled him at once, and the only thing left in its wake was a sad, bitter, and aging knight who had never known love for anything but his own foolish vengeance and pride.

"Everyone wants something," he croaked, running his fingers against her cheek. Lautrec knew what he wanted then... but what he wanted was likely already dead.

He closed his eyes-

-they opened again. Time had passed. He had lost far too much blood. Where do you go when you die, Ana? He was going to find out soon. His eyes closed to slits-

-and snapped open.

Coming forth in the blizzard, coming right towards them, was Quelana. Madness, the rationale part of him left screamed at once, and he forced himself to peer into the bundled blanket in his arms. Quelana was still there, wrapped tightly within. He blinked, frowned, lifted his gaze back to the blizzard. The second Quelana was still coming; a flood of black robes floating forth in a wash of swirling white snow. Impossible, the rationale voice shouted, but his eyes weren't deceiving him. The thing coming forth was not an illusion as Ana (hopefully) was. It was as real as he, and Lautrec did the one thing that all knights did when faced with an impossible reality: he armed himself.

One hand pulled Quelana protectively against his chest, the other unsheathed a shotel and held it balefully between them and whatever mad demon in Quelana's robes was approaching. Who-or what-ever it was showed no signs of intimidation. They only kept floating forth atop a sea of black robes that might very likely have housed nothing at all.

It is death, Lautrec thought. Coming for either the witch or myself. His fingers tightened on his shotel. Can death be killed? Let us find out.

But when the figure was just at the rim of striking distance, it halted, cocked its head on its side, and stared down at them.

Wind gusted across the barren, frozen, lands the thing stood upon, sending its dark robes in a mad dance. Lautrec raised his shotel higher. "Stay back," he croaked, disappointed at how weak his voice sounded. "You hear me, demon? Stay back!"

The demon's head cocked slightly more on its side. Its arms lifted, though, and when the robes fell back to the elbows, Lautrec saw pale, slender, hands poking out from within; hands that were not entirely unlike Quelana's own. Then those hands reached for the demon's hood and peeled it away from the demon's head revealing a face that was not a demon's at all, but a woman's.

Not a woman's, Lautrec corrected himself. A witch's.

He hadn't spent much time thinking on Quelana's sisters, in truth. He had always pictured them as monstrous, deformed, half-spider, demons. It was as the Chosen he'd encountered in some other life had spoken of them. He'd even glimpsed the warrior called 'Quelaag' once. She fit the description of 'monstrous' ten fold. And though he knew they were bound to encounter the other Daughters of Chaos sooner or later on their journey into the frozen lands of Izalith, he had never been truly

concerned with the things. Monsters, he knew how to deal with. You just took up a weapon and cut. But this thing... this was something else.

Her face was beautiful, like Quelana's but, Lautrec thought, not quite as breathtaking. Her hair was at length with Quelana's as well, but where Quelana's was a ravenous black, this witch's was a pale blonde. Her eyes were striking and blue, like two chips of frozen diamond twinkling in her head, and the lines of her face gave him the impression that she was somehow older that Quelana, if such a thing was even possible of the Great Witch's daughters. Her nose was a thin, slightly-crooked, thing that hung over a mouth set in a hard line.

Not all of your sisters were deformed, Lautrec thought, returning his gaze to the lifeless face of Quelana. Now I remember. You were the one that got away... but there was one who stayed back. Stayed and, somehow, resisted the chaos that took the rest of your family. Stayed and defended the entrance of the Bed of Chaos and your mother's forsaken soul. And now... now she has come for her vengeance on the sister that fled. He lifted his eyes to the blonde witch. His grip tightened on his shotel. "Stay back," he warned. "I'm injured. I'm sure you can see that. But I'm a knight. And a knight can always find a way to kill."

The witch's eyes narrowed on his own, but she spoke no reply.

"Her life isn't yours to claim, witch," he growled, pulling Quelana back a bit closer to him. "I... I won't let you take her from me."

The witch stepped forward.

"Back!" He shouted, swinging his shotel at the air between them. She was calling his bluff. There was no way to defend both Quelana and himself with his wounds draining the blood from his body and the cold draining the acumen from his mind. He grit his teeth and swung again. "Stay back you damned-"

Her fingers came together and a pillar of flame snapped from them so quickly, Lautrec had no time to defend against it. The attack lashed at his hand gripping the shotel, and the burning sensation dropped the blade from it at once. He winced, sucking ice into his lungs through clenched teeth, and reached for it. His fingers wrapped the hilt and-

-the witch's hand fell atop his own.

He lifted his eyes to her's. Her lips finally moved, and when they did, they whispered in a language he did not understand, but the message was clear enough.

"Sleep," her tongue commanded, and he was helpless but to obey at once.

-o-o-o-

He awoke beneath a dome of ice.

Lautrec made to sit, but every muscle in his body denied him the privilege at once and he wound up laying back wincing on whatever he had been laid atop. He opened his eyes to slits and saw it was a bed of sticks and webbing. Not dead, he thought. A good thing.

He tried sitting again, and this time-after some effort-he accomplished the task. At once, his eyes fell to his chest, where his armor and the clothes beneath had been removed and bandages had been wrapped around his wounds. The hole in his thigh had been tended to as well, and Lautrec, despite being half-naked, felt a warmth take him. His gaze drifted to the center of the small, domed, room he sat in and found a bonfire, crackling and sizzling with a flame at its heart. The sight was wonderful. He stumbled off the bedding of webs at once, flinching only briefly upon impact on the snow-ridden surface that was the room's floor, and crawled the short distance to the fire to hold his hands to it and drive the cold from them.

Movement beyond the flames. He lifted his head and found the blonde witch that had put him under her spell in the first place, and all at once, Lautrec remembered what, exactly, he was doing there.

"Where is she," he demanded of the exotic creature before him at once, though his voice came seeping from his lips in a hoarse, weak, trail and sounded anything but 'demanding'. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Quelana. Where is she? Where!?" His hand reached for the hilt of a shotel that was not there.

The witch was, seemingly, unimpressed with his anger. She stepped around the bonfire and towered over him on his knees. He made to grab her wrist, but her hand shifted aside and grabbed his instead.

"You took her," he muttered. "You took her from me."

When her voice finally came, it was soft and sweet and gentle, but carried the underlying tone of one who demanded obedience. "Go lie back down."

He stared up at her a moment, too nonplussed to respond.

Her brow creased only slightly as she held his gaze. "I can take your mind over with but a few words from my lips and make you lie back down. Is that what you choose?"

His eyes flicked to the bedding of web, to the bonfire, back to the witch. Only one thing in his mind seemed worthy of verbalizing: "Does she live?"

"Lie down now."

He wanted an answer; he did as she said. The trek back to his 'bed' was wracked with pain, but thankfully brief, and when he finally dropped

himself back down, the blonde witch was at his side almost immediately. He lifted his hands between them, a knight's instinct of defense, but she was quick to take hold of them and set them aside. Her pale blue eyes flicked across the features of his bare chest. Her hands moved for the wound beside his shoulder and carefully peeled back the bandaging there.

He winced and her eyes moved to his. "You have lost much blood."

He ignored that. "Does she live or not!? Answer me!"

In turn, she ignored him. She reached for his other wounds and, after checking on them, redressed each one with a fresh bandage. When it was done, he made to sit again, but her hand laid atop his chest and pinned him back down. "You need to rest."

"I need to see Quelana," he snapped. "You took her. I want her back."

The witch frowned. "Do you claim her as your own?"

He held the witch's eyes, unsure of what answer to give that would help his situation. "I... I suppose I do. If it wasn't for her... I'd be face-down in a street somewhere, my liver bursted from wine, my lungs filled with rainwater. I owe her my life, and in turn... I claim her own. It is not yours to have... or to end."

The witch's eyes narrowed. "And what makes you think, human, that I seek to end Quelana's life?"

"She's your sister, isn't she?" "She is."

"And she fled from this nightmare around us when the great chaos came and turned most all of it to ruin... save for you, I suppose."

"She did."

Lautrec frowned. "I... she said you sought vengeance against her for her 'abandonment'."

A sadness stole across the witch's face, briefly turning her comely features homely. "Is that what Quelana believed?"

'Believed', he thought. Not 'believes'. Why is she talking in the past tense? "Yes. That's what she believes. Now, where is-"

"Quelana is my baby sister," the witch went on. "You humans may have convinced yourselves that anything below the precious soil of your great kingdoms up there must be 'terrible' and 'demonic', but we hold love in our hearts the same as you. I would never harm my sister. It brings me great sadness to hear she held fear in her heart. She was... always such a

curious little thing." She smiled wistfully. "My little sister."

"Why do you keep talking as if she is no more," Lautrec growled, anger stirring in his chest and giving him a fresh burst of energy. He used it to sit, and this time when the witch made to stop him, he grabbed her wrists and held them at bay. "Answer me!"

The witch stared at him. "...she was dead long before I came upon the two of you."

"Lies," he snapped. "You're lying. You have her! Where is she!?" He shook her arms. "Where!?"

The witch was not perturbed by his actions. She only went on staring that sad, wistful, stare of hers'. "It was an admirable thing of you to carry her body back home to her family, but human... she is gone."

Lautrec shook his head. "You..." Where do you go when you die, Ana? "You... are lying." The biggest fool in Lordran. "You're lying!"

"You clearly cared very deeply for my sister," the witch went on, laying a placating hand on his chest. "For that, you have my gratitude, human."

He threw his weight forward. The witch, caught unaware, moved to take hold of him, but his hands found her arms and wrestled them to her sides. He shoved her down to the webbing and held her pinned beneath him. She opened her mouth, likely to take possession of his mind, but his hands moved from her arms and closed around her throat. He squeezed. "YOU LIE!"

Her response was a choked gurgle from her sealed throat and a desperate claw at his grip that did nothing to loosen it.

That old familiar rage was burning up ever inch of his insides then, and the face of the damned witch turned to the face of the damned sister who'd destroyed his life as a boy. His bare arms tensed, the veins ripping up to the surface. The blonde witch closed her eyes and pulled for air that he would not allow into her lungs. He tightened and tightened and tightened and-

-the face became Ana's. Not the teenaged Ana, but the grown one. The one Abby had help him see. The one he loved. He let the witch go and stumbled back off the webbing.

"Liar," he muttered, slipping in the snows but maintaining his footing. "I'll find her. You can't keep her from me!"

The witch coughed and took hold of her bruised neck.

He pried his eyes from her, found the room's sole entrance, and rushed for it. It led to a short, dark, tunnel, but at the end, he could see light. Lots

of it. He hurried forward.

It spilled him out to a massive chamber, overgrown with frosted tree roots with tangles of webbing and icicles dangling from their branches' bellies. The chamber of the Bed of Chaos, he thought, scrambling forth and slipping twice more on the ice. He fought his way around a massive root protruding up from cracked bits of stone slabs and came upon the chamber's center.

There, flanked by the tree's arms and two, massive and deformed, half- spider witches, Quelana lie on a raised bit of stone; fires burning at either end of her still, lifeless, figure. The spider-witches faced him. Their bulbous bodies and swollen faces were ridden with tumors, and they looked to be grafted to the very ice they were propped up against; as if Izalith and its daughters had at last become one. They were dying, he realized, but it didn't mater then because Quelana was dead: truly, utterly, and inexorably dead.

He fell to his knees.

Only you, he thought. Nothing left now worth living for. Only you. I suppose... you got what you deserved, didn't you... the biggest fool in Lordran.

He might've taken pity on himself, but then cold hands closed on his shoulders and ancient words whispered in his ear that turned his mind to mush and his will to ash.

The man delicately walking upon the wire in his head fell again. This time, however, Lautrec wished he would never rise back up. Then-  
-darkness.

Chapter 57

In, perhaps, what was the Gods' idea of 'justice', the dogs were feasting on Chester's corpse when they came upon it as they had been Kirk's. It was just after dawn, and in the early-morning mists, the hounds swarmed the fallen crossbowmen within the sprawl of muddy grass that was the Archives' garden. When they approached, the beasts' head lifted, protruding through the mists like dead fish bobbing up to a lake's surface, and the creature's beady eyes landed upon their party. A few snarled. A few more barred their teeth. But when they neared, Tarkus taking point with his enormous greatsword clutched up to his shoulder, the courage ran from the beasts and they skittered off yelping and whimpering.

Their party gathered around Chester's half-eaten corpse. Solaire grimaced upon glimpsing the man's disfigured face. His eyes floated to the chest, where the shaft of a bolt lifted out of the mangled flesh there like a flag of defeat. I killed a man, Solaire, Abby had told him at the church the first day they'd made camp there. I took a bolt to his chest over and over again till the life drained from his eyes. I killed him because I had to. I killed him because he was no longer a man. He was a monster. Solaire had commended her. As a knight, he knew the ugly truth better than anyone: death was as necessary an ingredient as life to keep the world in balance. It didn't make looking upon it any easier, though, and so Solaire ushered them forth.

Beneath the crumbling archway of stone they went, and into Logan's prison tower they emerged. The air, somehow, grew colder around them despite being wrapped in the castle's stone, and Solaire at once smelled the faint scent of death and decay. They pushed through a narrow twist of rock, passing Logan's various cages and cels (all, thankfully, empty now) and were deposited into the base of the prison itself.

Solaire led them around the stone dividing the main room from the smaller one they'd made their entrance from and stepped forth to the tower's center. There, lying in a tangle of broken wood and warped metal and twisted levers, Logan's machine lied; as dead and dormant as Chester lay outside. Praise the Sun, he thought. How many days and weeks did I so foolishly pledge myself to your cause, Logan? And to what end? This mad machine and all the suffering it brought with it?

Rickert shouldered his way around Solaire and prodded a bent cog lying useless at the machine's base with the toe of his boot. "Don't s'ppose this old thing can be put back together, do you?"

"Rickert," Rhea snapped, stepping beside the young man and clutching his arm. "Why would you even suggest such a horrible thing!?"

"Horrible? What's so horrible 'bout it? All it did was show us some fancy pictures. You know, back in Vinheim, them wealthy bastards that call

themselves the 'noble' used to pay a damned good bit of gold to see plays at the theater that weren't half as good as the one we saw for free within this machine here." He grinned. "We could make a fortune off this thing."

"Aye?" Tarkus stepped forth and planted hit boot atop the cog, splintering it further in half. He faced Rickert, ignoring the young man's indignant scowl. "And who are you going to sell to when the world ain't nothin' but hollows and demons?"

Rickert threw his hands up. "I thought we're saving the world. Gather the soul shards, enter the Kiln, Solaire hacks down old Gwyn and lights the bonfire? Remember? Nothing wrong with thinkin' of our... financial future when Lordran is saved, is there?"

Tarkus barked laughter. "You'd think a man with his own pet dragon wouldn't need concern himself with such petty things as gold."

"I told you Charles ran away," Rickert said, the playfulness returning to his expression. "And maybe with enough gold even you could buy yourself a dragon, Cradlebreaker."

Tarkus grinned. "Well, you can't say I didn't warn you." He sheathed his greatsword, and raised his fists. "Time to get that name changed to 'Rickertbreaker'."

"Oh, woe is me! If only there were some strong cradle around to contain this giant of a man and save me!"

The two laughed and grabbed at each other's arms. Rhea rolled her eyes and sighed. Solaire only watched on smiling. A bit of entertainment wasn't such a bad thing from time to time and-

-something shattered deeper in the tower.

At once, all four of them were at the ready; Rickert and Tarkus prying loose from one another's grip to unsheath their blades and catalyst. Solaire raised his shield and pushed forth between the two of them, narrowing his eyes into the darkness that was the opposite side of the room. He could see Logan's old desk, still littered with scattered bits of paper and discarded candles. Massive pillars ran the outer rim of the tower, though, leaving a dozen hiding spots for a dozen potential threats.

"Who goes there!?" Solaire shouted. "Reveal yourself!"

A moment passed. Silence was the reply.

Rhea moved to the front of the party, held her talisman at arm's length, and whispered in prayer. The tower came alive in her miracle's golden glow, showering the darkness with light and washing away the shadows. Solaire swept his eyes meticulously across each of the pillars in turn.

"There," he shouted. "Look, behind that one." He pointed out the vague shape of a foot half-concealed behind a pillar, moving ever-so-slightly in Rhea's spotlight. "Come out! You're spotted and outnumbered! Throw down you weapon and you will be-"

The former captain of Logan's guard, Petrus, rounded the pillar, his arms raised in the air.

"Petrus!?" Rhea shouted, lowering her talisman at once and taking a step towards the man.

Rickert grabbed her arm, halting further advancement. "Careful, Ray."

Tarkus' expression darkened. "Aye. The last time I saw this fat bastard... he was threatening to cut the fingers from my hand with his buddy, Kirk." He glanced to Solaire. "And had beaten you within an inch of your life, Solaire."

Solaire looked to the man. He was a pudgy man with a pudgy face hanging over a pudgy neck, and his bowl of a haircut bobbed around his pudgy head as it moved. His cheeks had begin to thin though, and lines of stress blossomed around his dark-rimmed eyes. The last time Solaire had looked upon those eyes, Tarkus had the right of it: they were boring into him as he and Kirk beat Solaire within an inch of his life.

Petrus wobbled forth, his hands trembling above the iron gauntlets that wrapped his forearms. He stumbled and slipped on a mound of books, recovered, and continued on. His eyes flittered nervously between the four of them and he kept swallowing and licking at his lips as if he'd forgotten how and was just then relearning the skill. "M-M-Mercy," he pleaded; his voice hoarse and weak and miles away from the commanding thing that had given the order to have Solaire locked away when he was Logan's captain of the guard. "M-Mercy, Knight Solaire. I don't want her to eat me. She wants my bones. P-Please. Don't let her eat me."

Tarkus growled, hoisted his sword, and stepped forth. Solaire caught him, and when Tarkus looked back, Solaire shook his head. "Still your rage, my friend. Let us speak with him."

"He's bloody mad," Rickert said. "Listen to him! Look at him!"

"Solaire's right," Rhea pleaded. "I once counted Petrus as a friend of mine, and, well, I feel he deserves to be heard out."

"M-Mercy, k-kind knight," Petrus croaked. He'd worked his away around the ruin of Logan's machine and was taking delicate steps closer, shaking hands held placatingly before him.

Solaire frowned. "How have you survived all this time, Petrus? Where wereyou when the Archives fell and the men and women fled to the Parish? If you were here... where did you hide when I came through with

the salvaging party?"

"H-Hidden," Petrus stammered, nodding his head and sending his bobbed hair into a frenzy. "I h-hide. Stayed hidden. Had to hide. She wants to eat my b-bones."

"Who?" Solaire questioned. "Who wants to 'eat your 'bones'?"

"The dragon-woman." Petrus' eyes narrowed back to the path they'd come from. "Out there. She howls in the night. She howls and howls and..." Tears swelled in his eyes. "And she wants to eat me. I know it. I did bad. I angered the Gods. I was a bad man. Bad Petrus." He fell to his knees and crawled to Solaire's boots. "Oh, take mercy on m-me, Knight Solaire. Don't let her eat me!"

"A quick death," Tarkus said. "We'll give you the mercy of a quick death. Nothing more."

"Tarkus," Solaire said, fixing his friend with a reproachful look.

Tarkus sighed. "Well he is damned mad, isn't he? You heard him! The coward's been hiding this whole time! Craven bastard. We fight while he hides? And, Solaire, he beat you within a damned near inch of your life! He doesn't deserve our mercy!"

Solaire turned back to the man kneeling before him. Petrus' lip quivered and his hands laced together in a desperate plea. Solaire lowered to a knee and laid his hand on Petrus' shoulder. "Alright. Calm yourself. We're not going to harm you."

Petrus might've been trying to smile, but the gesture looked so queer upon his face, Solaire couldn't be sure.

"Who or what is this 'dragon-woman' you speak of?"

"Out there," Petrus whispered, as if speaking any louder would bring whatever he feared down upon him. "She howls at night, Solaire. I hear it. It is the sound of pure agony. She's angry about something. And now she wants to eat my bones."

"Dragon-woman," Rhea began, "are you talking about the crossbreed? Priscilla?"

Petrus nodded.

"She helped us though," said Rickert. "I seen it myself. Cut down a good number of those hollows when they stormed the Archives with that big bastard of a scythe she carries."

"She helped Lady Quelana," Solaire corrected him. "Her allegiance was to our good witch, not us. Quelana told me... told me the crossbreed

despised humans." As Gwyn does, Solaire thought.

"Where is she?" Tarkus asked.

Petrus swallowed, swiped at his lips, nodded towards the smaller room. "C-Caves. She stands out there in front of the Crystal Caves at night. Howling. I know she's a dragon-woman, but... but she howls like a wolf. A hungry wolf." He whimpered.

Tarkus' looked back to the path. "Well, Crystal Caves just so happens to be where we're heading." He patted the hilt of his greatsword. "Might be time to show the human-hater just how kind us humans can be."

"No!" Petrus pleaded. "You can't go out there! She'll eat your bones! Didn't you hear me!? You have to take me away from this place, you-" He swallowed, flittering his eyes around the room again. "Is L-Logan at the Parish, too? If he is... I'd rather take my chances surviving on my own here."

"Logan?" Rickert echoed, an amused smirk rising up his face. "Fairly certain our drunken friend, Lautrec, said he took a shotel to that mad sorcerer's throat. He's long dead, pudgy."

"Lautrec... k-killed him?"

"So he claims," Rhea said. "Though a man like the knight of Carim... who can be certain whether his 'claims' hold true or not."

"When?" Petrus questioned.

"When?"

"When did Lautrec kill him?"

"Shortly before war came to the Archives," Solaire said. "Abby says she watched it happen herself. She wouldn't lie."

Petrus shook his head. "No. Impossible. It must be a lie. I saw Logan myself after the battle had started. Tarkus knocked me unconscious when Quelana freed the two of you. When I woke, the war had began, so... I fled. I was hiding... hiding down here in the prison tower from you, Solaire, because I knew I'd wronged you and the balance of power was shifting away from Logan, but... then I was hiding from him, too. Logan, that is. I watched him from the shadows. He was holding his neck, I'll admit that. Perhaps the knight of Carim wounded him. There was dried blood on his fingers. But he was most certainly not dead. Then... Oh, Gods."

"What?" Solaire urged him on. "What happened? Tell it true, Petrus."

"I saw Logan heading towards his dungeon when the fighting grew so loud outside the walls, I was sure they were going to collapse in on us. I

followed along behind. I... I was hoping for his protection. A fool was I. I watched that mad sorcerer walk into Griggs' cell. Then Griggs screamed. The man didn't have a tongue. I know that. But I swear it on anything, I heard him scream." Petrus' eyes drifted to stare into nothing. "It was the worst sound I'd ever heard in my life."

"But Griggs is alive," Rhea explained. "He's at the Parish with the rest of the survivors right now."

Petrus licked at his lips and shook his head. "That... thing wearing his skin isn't Griggs. Not anymore."

"What are you talking about?" Tarkus asked.

"Logan walked into that cell... and never walked back out," Petrus said. "I swear it on my life. Griggs walked out, but... but he'd changed. His eyes. His walk. Everything about the man. I would know. It was me who Logan assigned to keep him alive, and I'm telling you: that man is not Griggs."

"If he's not Griggs..." Rickert began. "...then who the hell is the man that looks like him at the Parish?"

Rhea squeezed her robes at the chest and lines of fear wrinkled her comely face. Tarkus' knuckles whitened around the hilt of his sword. Rickert narrowed his eyes shrewdly between the two of them. Solaire nodded. The answer laid plain enough between the four of them, but no one dared speak it. Instead, Solaire said, "Let us go take another look at the cells. Perhaps they weren't as 'empty' as I thought."

They weren't. When Solaire led them back into the dungeons-Petrus having to be practically dragged between Tarkus and Rickert, mumbling on about the 'hungry dragon-woman' outside-they stepped before the cell that had housed Griggs and peered inside. It was vague, but in the shadowed corner, the lump of a human body was crumpled up in the darkness.

Solaire pushed the cell door inwards. It creaked on its hinges. "Rhea. Light." When a moment passed and no light came, he faced the priestess. Her eyes were widened on the shadowed body. "Rhea," he called again. She snapped out of her daze, nodded, and sent a miracle of light into the cell. Solaire entered.

He knelt at the body, took it by the shoulder, and twisted till it faced Rhea's talisman.

"Gods..." Tarkus muttered over his shoulder.

The dead thing's face was a face no longer. It was scarred and mutilated and missing its eyes and nearly all of its features. The nose was hacked clean off. There were gaping holes in the decayed cheeks, and a worm slithered between them. The brow was caved in, as if by some mighty

force. The black pits where eyes should have been housed only two pockets of squirming maggots. Solaire grimaced, but swallowed back his disgust. There was one more task that needed doing. He brought his hand to the corpses' twisted jaw and pried its purple lips apart. A foul odor drifted from within the head's mouth, but Solaire peered in anyway. There was no tongue.

He faced his waiting party. "This poor soul is, in fact, Griggs," he told them, nodding. "And I suppose that means the man masquerading as him at the Parish... is Logan. The mad sorcerer yet lives."

A wave of silence washed over the party then, each of his companions brows drawn in pensive lines.

"How can that be!?" Rhea finally questioned. "There's no spell that could steal a man's flesh... is there?"

"Logan spent many days and nights studying every tome, book, and scroll he could get his hands on from the Archives' library," Solaire explained. "He uncovered a great number of forgotten, clandestine, 'tricks' in his pursuit of knowledge. Perhaps this is one of them."

"I don't like this," Tarkus said. "I knew there was something strange about that man and his bizarre smile. And, Gods, who could do that to a man and live with it!"

Solaire looked back to the disfigured face of Griggs. A maggot rolled from his eye socket to his cheek and slipped inside a gash there. Solaire took a bit of the clothing clinging to the man's corpse, ripped it free, and laid it over Griggs' face. Praise the Sun.

"We have to get back to the church," Rhea said. "There are children there! And Abby, Domhnall, Anastacia... Gods, what is Logan trying to do!?"

Solaire rose. "I don't know. But you're right, Lady Rhea. We need make haste now. If Logan yet lives on... his madness lives on with him."

Rickert rubbed at his chin. "I've got a bad feeling about this. Logan lives... and our locked-up Dragonslayer in Anor Londo claimed Ben somehow now commands an army of Darkwraiths." He reached for Rhea's hand and squeezed. "Scratch that: I've got a very bad feeling about this."

"If Logan or that damned, whiny, Chosen boy have laid a hand on anyone," Tarkus began, his brow furrowed right down into the bridge of his nose, "I will take their heads from their bodies. Chosen or not, I will kill that boy."

"Griggs, er, Logan, I suppose, was never far from Benjamin," Rhea said. "If Ben leads Darkwraith... that really means Logan most likely leads them."

"Let us not jump to conclusions," Solaire said. "We will decide what to do when we have definitive information laid before us. Until then... we make

haste to the Crystal Caves and retrieve the Lord Soul shard as quickly as possible."

"No!" Petrus protested. "Don't be fools! She's out there! She's angry! She'll- "

"Permission to knock this rambling fool unconscious," Tarkus requested.

"Permission denied, Tarkus," Solaire answered. He stepped to Petrus and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Petrus..."

The man's jowls trembled. "Y-Yes?"

"Listen to me closely, because I'll only say this once. When the Archives still stood, you wronged me. More importantly, you wronged others. Innocents. You were a craven and treacherous thing and someday, from the Gods above, you will answer for your crimes. Today is not that day. I feel we now stand on the cusp of a very brutal battle, one that may very well determine the fate of Lordran itself, and I require all the able-bodied men and women left in this cold world at my side should I hope to be victorious. I am willing to forget your cruelties, but I need to know your allegiance is pledged to the safety of Lordran."

"But I-"

"We stand against a great foe. Perhaps the world's greatest foe. The Darkwraiths. And now they've been paired with one of the world's greatest minds in Logan. As mad as he may be, the man is unquestionably brilliant. The odds are against us, but if we stand together, I assure you..." He faced each of the four of them in turn. "I assure you we will triumph."

"Aye," Tarkus added, hammering a fist against his breast plate.

"This is not the time for cowardice," Solaire went on. "So cast it aside, Petrus, and take up arms. It is not I calling for aid, but Lordran itself. So that the darkness that has plagued this world may pass, and the sun may shine once more. I ask you now, friend: will you stand beside me?"

The fat man lowered his gaze. He rubbed his fingers together and took heavy, labored, breaths. After a long moment, he returned his eyes to Solaire and, as had been requested, some of the fear had left them. "Alright, Knight Solaire. Alright. I will stand beside you."

Solaire clapped his shoulder. "Good. Now, we are going to those Crystal Caves, crossbreed defending them or not, and retrieving the soul shard that lies within. What say you to that?"

Petrus pulled a deep breath. "I say... I hope you know what you're doing."

The rains had picked up a bit when they returned to the gardens. The slope of damp grass had turned to slick mud beneath their boots, and so

the going was slow as they worked their way down around the standing sentinels of trees that littered the path. Looming up over the treetops in wait, the mass of blue and white rock that was the Crystal Caves' peak watched their approach. Solaire thought it looked like the hunched back of a giant golem in slumber. The image reminded him to arm himself, which he did immediately.

As the trees tapered off, and the grass died away in favor of the mixed stone and crystal that ran in a jagged line beneath the cave's mouth, thunder growled overhead, and faintly in the distance, Solaire heard lightning crack and something splinter. He looked skywards. The canvas above was a grey, drab, thing, and was plagued with a swirl of black clouds lumbering forth from the East. The storm had been ever-present since the Archives had fallen, but in the last two days something was changing. The clouds gathered more fiercely; the winds swept a bit colder; the rains carried in thicker falls; the booming clasps of thunder had grown deafening. At their last camp, Rhea had called it 'the end times', and looking upon that ominous sprawl of sky then, Solaire could not help but feel the term was quite apt.

When the next rumble of thunder came, something else had been left in its wake; a quieter, closer, sound that reminded him of the great wolf Sif's hungry growl. He brought his straight sword up before his shield and peered forth into the darkness of the cavernous mouth before him. Tarkus was at his side at once; greatsword at the ready.

"Crossbreed," he muttered contemptuously. "If she's in there... we'd be better off luring her out here in the open, where our superior numbers can hold some advantage."

"She has wings," Rickert said, joining at Solaire's other side, catalyst in one hand, shortsword in the other. "You want her scooping you up and hauling you off to her dragon's nest for a snack later on, Cradlebreaker?"

Behind them, Petrus whimpered.  
Tarkus shrugged. "Wings can be clipped."

Movement stirred in the shadows beneath the cave walls. The three of them took up arms at once.

When she came, the sight of the crossbreed was still just as breathtaking as when Solaire had first laid eyes on her. Priscilla stood taller than even Tarkus. Her long body and legs were clad in a heavy, cream-colored, fur that might have been a cloak but might have been her growing from her flesh, too. Her face was comely and sharp-featured, with emerald eyes that reminded Solaire of Lady Quelana, and her hair was a blizzard of soft snow framing it. In her hands, a dark scythe that ran the length of the beast-woman's entire body; the blade curving away from the end hooked and sharpened to a point. Behind her, a furry tail dragged along, sweeping

pebbles and dustings of snow to its sides.

Her fangs were bared. Her eyes bore hatred into Solaire's own.

Solaire refused to meet her anger, opting instead to bow his head respectfully. "Crossbreed Priscilla. It is good to see you again. You left after the battle at the Archives in a hurry, we never did get to proper thank you for-"

She snarled-an aggressive, primitive, thing-and snapped her fanged jaws at the air between them. Her scythe rose a bit higher in her grip. "You stay back!" She hissed; a voice that, once, had been pretty. Now it was so thick with rage, it was hardly recognizable as her own. "You hear me, human knight!? You leave these grounds at once or I will cut you down." Her eyes swept their numbers. "Cut all of you down!"

Tarkus snorted laughter. "You can try, beast-woman."

Solaire fixed him with a reproachful look. "Now is not the time for bravado and hubris, Tarkus."

"But-" Whatever the big man in the black armor saw in Solaire's eyes was clearly enough to give him second thought on whatever he'd intended to say. He closed his mouth, nodded, and lowered his sword back to his hip.

"Humans," Priscilla hissed. "Always so quick to fill your heads with delusions of grandeur." She narrowed her glowering expression on Solaire. "You will not cause my father any further suffering, human knight."

"Your father? Seath?"

The anger faltered in the crossbreed's eyes, an ephemeral flash of sorrow rising up to take its place before the rage swelled again. "He suffers... he suffers because of you humans and your scheming little plots!" She stepped forward; the scythe prodding the gap between them balefully. "And now you've come at the command of your mad wizard-king to finish what he started, haven't you?"

Solaire lifted a hand. "My lady, I assure you-"

"I am not your 'lady'!" Priscilla roared; another step nearer; another prod of her scythe.

Tarkus moved forth to intercept-

-and Solaire pulled him back.

When Tarkus had been placated, Solaire spun on Priscilla again and said, "I swear it, crossbreed, I do not know what you're talking about! We haven't come to cause any suffering! I assure you of that!"

"No? Your sorcerer-king made the same claim once. But that was nothing but human deception. He mortally wounded my already-suffering father and stole his Primordial Crystal!" She roared; neared. "Now you've come to finish him, haven't you! To run your human-blades along his scaleless flesh and watch him writhe!"

Solaire slipped his arm from his shield and let it fall to his feet. He tossed down his blade beside it.

"Solaire! What in Izalith-" Tarkus began, but Solaire lifted a hand for silence and his friend-ever loyal-gave it to him.

He took a step towards the crossbreed, unarmed, hands at his sides.

Priscilla snarled and lifted her sycthe; her eyes narrowing shrewdly upon his own. "What are you doing!?"

"I do not seek to make your father suffer, crossbreed," he explained calmly. "And I can only assume this 'sorcerer-king' you speak of is Logan. Do I have the right of it?"

"You know it is! You serve him!"

"I did once," Solaire admitted. "I was a fool then, but I am a fool no longer. You are right. Logan is a madman and a danger to all living things, not just your father. And he lives, crossbreed. He lives yet still, through trickery and deceptions, as you said. But we do not stand at his side. Priscilla, we stand against him! At this very moment, I believe he is plotting against Lordran's saftey for his own greedy desires. My intention now is to stop Logan and save Lordran. That is all! I swear it"

She snarled again, her scythe coming up to her shoulder poised to strike.

Solaire lowered to a knee and held her gaze. The action-perhaps the boldness of it-gave her pause. "We need the soul shard your father holds, Priscilla. If he suffers, then let us end his suffering. Lordran needs a similar end brought to Gwyn if it is to live on. The only way to accomplish that is to fill the Lordvessel with the Lord Souls, open the path to the Kiln, and finish the old man off." Old man of mine. "Please, crossbreed. I know you think humans only seek to enslave and destroy and conquer, but I promise you, as long as I live, you will never be asked to bend the knee to a human. Not ever. It is I now who kneels before you. I respect you. I swear it."

"More lies!" She hissed, the scythe coming up a bit higher.

His eyes could trace the line it would cut should she bring it down upon him. The attack would take him clean in two. Solaire did not waver. "You can strike me down, Priscilla, but know you will not be striking down an enemy who means to harm you, but a friend who only seeks your help. Help to bring justice upon the mad 'sorcerer-king' who harmed you and

held you prisoner. Help to save a dying world that falters all around us as we speak. Help to right the wrongs of my ancestors as well as yours. Help... to bring light back to the darkness that smothers it."

Priscilla glared down upon him, and for a long moment, there was only the pattering of rain on rock to fill the silence between them. Then that sorrowful expression he'd glimpsed clawed back out of the recesses of the crossbreed's heart to contort her face. The scythe lowered; only a bit, but enough to give him peace of mind. "My father... he's in much pain..." Her eyes grew rheumy. "He... he won't let anyone into his chamber. Not even me. He suffers so dearly... how could you bring an end to that?"

Solaire lifted from his knee. Priscilla tensed only a moment, then his hand was on her own and the anxiety slipped from her posture like a heavy cloak. "We will finish Seath the Scaleless, Priscilla. I promise you that. We will find a way to send him to the next life as painless as we can."

She stared into his eyes, perhaps searching for verisimilitude. When she'd apparently found what she was looking for, the scythe lowered to her side and she nodded her head. "If you try to betray me, human knight... you will be the last human ever to do so."

"A fair proposal," he said, extending his hand between them.

She eyed it, seemed to consider it, and-at last-took it in her own.

Solaire glanced to his waiting party. They stared upon the scene laid before them with mistrustful looks. The time for mistrust is at an end though, Solaire thought. Now is the time for unity. I only hope they afford the crossbreed such a thing. He eyed Priscilla's scythe: long, pointed, sharp. And, of course, that she affords them the same.

When Priscilla and he had come to the agreement that she would lead them to her suffering father's chamber, the crossbreed pressed on into the darkness of the Crystal Caves and Tarkus, Rhea, Rickert, and Petrus, gathered around Solaire. Each of them seemed to have some input as to what he'd done, but when their protests started flowing, Solaire only lifted a hand, shook his head, and pointed forward. "We need allies now. Not foes. Come."

And that was the end of the discussion.

The caves were empty. Once, great butterflies said to have been conjured from Seath's infinite pool of wisdom and sorcery perched upon the jagged cliffs that ran the shimmering, blue, walls. Now, there was nothing but haggard crystal and crumbling rock. Once, great golems stalked the narrow pathways and choked off further penetration into the cavern's belly. Now, all the golems had been taken and used up by Logan, nothing left of them but mounds of pale dust littering the Archives' floors. Once, monstrous clams with legs like spiders and jaws that split apart into two

halves of man-eating shells skittered about looking to swallow up any courageous adventurer wandering close enough to their gaping mouths. Now, the only thing skittering across the cave floor were bits of colorful crystals raining from the ceiling overhead to splash at their feet.

Eventually, the path vanished under them, but Priscilla's pace did not waver in the slightest, and the crossbreed simply stalked out over the waiting chasm of nothing that faded to black beneath her; her feet appearing as if they were floating in mid-air; her tail skidding along nothing then. Rickert and Petrus complained. Tarkus and Rhea did not. Soon enough though, all four of them were stepping out beside Solaire anyway, and their party followed hastily in Priscilla's trail.

The crossbreed led them along invisible walkways (Solaire kept his chin up, his feet moving, and his nerves as still as he could command them), around clusters of crystals poking up from the cave floor like colorful garden bushes, beneath a tunnel that burrowed underground and spilled back out to a walkway that was, again, not there, and, finally, to a wide cavern that sloped down into Seath's chamber: dark and waiting.

He heard the groaning long before he spotted the dragon. "What is that sound?" Rickert asked.  
Priscilla swiped tears from her cheek. "My father's suffering."

A great groan that started low and bassy and trembled the rock underfoot before climbing a violent crescendo and peeking at a shrill whine came spilling out of the black chamber awaiting them. Something moved within. Something big enough that when it did, Solaire could feel the entire cave move with it. When a thump boomed, he thought for one mad moment that it was the sound of the walls readying to collapse in on them. Another groan; another whine; another thump. Something stirred in the darkness.

"Uh, Solaire?" Rickert began. "How exactly are we supposed to kill this thing."

"That 'thing' is my father!" Priscilla snapped.

Rickert took a step away from the crossbreed towering over him. "Right. Of course. Whatever you say, beastie. Your father. Fine. How are we supposed to kill him, though?"

"End his suffering..." Priscilla quietly corrected.

Tarkus patted his sword against his gauntlet-clad palm. "Same way you kill anything, I s'ppose."

Within the darkness of the great dragon's chamber, something came swaying forth; some great, grey, blob that loomed as high as the rocky

ceiling of the cavern itself. Solaire could hear crystals shattering, though the sound was drowned beneath the monstrous groaning that rumbled in intermittent waves. Seath's belly, he knew, along with the dragon's strange, tentacle-like, legs were littered with crystals that birthed and died in an endless cycle of cursed agony. If the plague spread to the ground at your feet and you lingered too long, the curse would afflict you as well, and before you could so much as scream, your body and innards turned to a rotted mass of dark crystals themselves. No man had ever survived it.

"This was a mistake," Petrus whimpered at their rear. "He's a massive dragon! He's going to eat our bones. Oh, Gods."

Solaire faced the man. "What did I tell you about cowardice, Petrus? Quell your fear. We will not falter here today."

"Father!" Priscilla wailed. "Reveal yourself! There is a knight here who will put an end to your suffering!"

Another moan; this one long and thick with anguish. The first bit of Seath slithered forth into the light: a crystal-ridden tentacle that sucked at the rocky earth and dragged the beast forward. A misshapen claw hooked out the darkness. Another. The snout of the dragon poked through the black curtain. Nostrils widened and narrowed. Eyes floated forth: two pale orbs rolling about madly in the monster's skull.

Solaire took survey of his party. Their own eyes were widened with apprehension, but when he gave the order to move forth and meet the beast in battle, they nodded their approval all the same.

They took the slope down to the chamber slow, Rickert and Rhea spreading out on Solaire's left flank, Tarkus and Petrus on his right, and Priscilla following along slowly in their trail; the crossbreeds hands laced together as if in prayer. The eyes atop the protruding snout watched them, but could not seem to focus on any one target for long before they rolled off to find something else. As the gap shortened, the shadowed dragon's groans and growls drew closer together and more aggressive. When it was all but closed, Seath revealed himself.

The dragon burst from the darkness in a blue and white blur of slithering tentacles and decaying wings and a rib cage that'd grown so emaciated, the beast's sallow skin hugged at the bones with every breath drawn through the creature's snout. Seath's front tentacles swept in a defensive arch, and every one of them were helpless but to leap back in retreat. When they had, the scaleless horror opened its jaws to an unnatural angle and a pale blue light radiated from within.

Solaire had only began to open his mouth to send warning to the party when the attack came: a blinding shaft of light that formed up around the dragon's breath and spilled down to blast apart the cave's rocky terrain.

The monster swept his head to the side, and the attack cut a line in the ground, shaking a trail of debris into the air and down upon their heads. Solaire scrambled back just as the 'breath' dug a trench at his feet. Seath snapped his jaws shut and the light died as quickly as it'd birthed.

Solaire recovered, lifted his shield, and checked on the others. They had all avoided the beast's fury, but they were visibly shaken.

Except Tarkus, who only battered his breast plate with a fist and roared a warcry of his own at the dragon before charging on the thing.

Seath's attention held on the-comparatively-small rush of black, iron, armor coming his way. When Tarkus was in striking distance, the dragon struck. Its side tentacle swept the cave and the tapered, narrow, end clashed against the rear of Tarkus' greaves. Tarkus grunted and fell back on his ass; Seath wasted no time in continuing his assault. The dragon clawed at its frail chest and roared. Breath misted out between its bared fangs and sept into the ground at its belly.

Solaire had seen that attack before. The curse was coming. "Tarkus! Get out of there!"

Tarkus got a knee under him-

-and the ground began erupting in a cascading wave of cursed crystals. They thundered forth from Seath's belly, jabbing up out of the grounds like a thousand daggers piercing from a thousand hands. Tarkus clambered to his feet, the eye slits of his helm focused on the coming attack. A line of crystal raced past him on the right. Another on his left. A third came right for him. Tarkus side-stepped, treading the narrow gap between crystals, but yet another barreled down the lane. He roared and stepped over one crystal as two more blossomed at his side. Tarkus spun, leapt, and-

-his leg was pierced with a crystal.

"Tarkus!" Solaire bellowed.

Tarkus did not seem to hear the shout, but Petrus did. The heavy man lumbered forth, carefully stepped around a cluster of crystals, hooked his arms under Tarkus' own, and pulled. They went tumbling out of the cursed forest springing up around their feet and spilled to a barren stretch of rock. Tarkus at once reached for his wounded leg, took hold of the broken crystal that pierced it, and blared pure agony as he pried it from his flesh and tossed it aside.

"Rhea!" Solaire shouted.

The priestess did not need further command. She clutched at her talisman and rushed for Tarkus' side at once. If the curse spread, their friend died. Seath's empty eyes found the rushing cleric, narrowed, his

jaws opened.

A blast of magic smacked the dragon's jaw, however, and pulled its attention back across the cavern, where Rickert stood; freshly-used catalyst in hand. Seath swiped a tentacle at the young man, but Rickert was quick to scramble away.

Solaire surveyed the battlefield, his wounded friend, the approaching dragon with the cursed breath that could take their lives just as easily as one of the thing's thunderous tentacles. He drew to a conclusion and made it known. "Regroup! Regroup and fall back!"

Rhea, who'd knelt over Tarkus and cleansed his wound with a golden bath of miraculous healing from her talisman, turned on Solaire and nodded. She and Petrus took hold of Tarkus' arms and, with their aid, he began hopping back on his good leg. Rickert rushed to join them, ducking under another quick shot of blue light from the dragon's mouth before sliding beside the party in a trail of dust and aiding the move of Tarkus. Solaire backpedaled with his sword drawn, though exactly how threatening the little blade looked to the monster's eyes perched fifty feet above, he did not know.

Their party joined together at the center of the cavern as Seath began worming his enormous body out of his own chamber in pursuit. Priscilla stood between them and the dragon, her hands laced together, her voice pleading in desperate shouts for her father to stop.

"ARGH!" Tarkus growled, setting weight on his wounded leg. "Bastard dragon!"

Solaire fixed Rhea with a concerned look. She spoke at once, "I sent the curse away before it could spread. He'll be fine."

"Yes, but for how long," Rickert asked. The young man's eyes were fixed on the approaching dragon. "I think we'd best fall back further. That monster is closing ground on us fast."

"Agreed," Solaire said, worked his way under Tarkus' arm, and turned to help the man back. His eyes floated to the top of the slope and before he could take one step, what he saw froze him in place and gaped his mouth.

Knight Ornstein stood in wait. "Oh no," Rhea whispered.

"What?" Tarkus asked. He lifted his head and found the Dragonslayer himself. "Gods be damned..."

"You've got to be kidding me!" Rickert snapped.  
Ornstein stepped towards them, his body and face hidden in the thick

plating of his elaborate armor. Clutched casually in his hand, his maddeningly long spear trailed alongside him. The lion's eyes of his lion's helm were set upon their group.

At their rear, Seath the Scaleless roared, and when Solaire glanced back, the beast had further closed in on them. Soon enough: they'd be in range of its cursed crystal breath.

"Tarkus..." Solaire muttered, prying his eyes from the dragon back to Ornstein. "Can you fight with that leg of yours."

"Aye," Tarkus growled. "Ray, hit me with something." "What?"  
"Anything! I just need a little boost."

Rhea drew her talisman to her lips, whispered upon it, and sent a light forth to wash Tarkus' black armor gold. Tarkus nodded his thanks, took up his sword, and looked to Solaire. "Your command?"

"We take the Dragonslayer," Solaire said. "We flee the actual dragon for now. Spread out on Ornstein's flanks. Watch for that spear of his. We take him together. Move now!"

They did.

Behind them, Solaire could hear Seath in approach, but for the time being, he could only ignore the monster and focus on the foe at hand; the last time he'd squared off against Ornstein, he'd nearly lost his life. The knight was as skilled in one-on-one combat as any man he'd ever faced. He could only hope their numbers-this time-would carry advantage over the warrior.

If Ornstein was concerned about his disadvantage, it did not show in his posture. The knight simply looked to each of them in turn as they approached; his spear still resting nonchalantly at his side.

Solaire could hear Seath's breath poisoning the cavern behind him.

When the party neared and began to spread on the Dragonslayer's flanks, Ornstein's voice seeped from the snarling mouth of his lion's helm: "Do it again."

Solaire lifted a fist; the command for halt. He narrowed his eyes on the Dragonslayer. "What did you say?"

"Do it again," Ornstein repeated. "In the Chamber of The Princess... you attacked me with lightning. I saw no talisman, but I may have been mistake. So do it again. Now."

"He's buying time!" Tarkus shouted. "So Seath can get up on our rear flank

and we'll have no room to maneuver! Let's charge this bastard knight, Solaire!"

Solaire held the lion's eyes. Ornstein stared right back.  
The cavern shook as Seath neared.

Praise the Sun, Solaire thought, lifted his arm, and focused every bit of strength he had in him to will lightning to his hand. It took a moment, but coils of pale yellow conjured up around his elbow, spiraled the length of his forearm, and pooled in his palm. He spun back and launched the attack without so much as taking aim. The bolt cut the air between them and Seath and splashed against the monster's emaciated chest. Seath wailed and thumped his tail against the cave, but looked otherwise unphased.

When Solaire turned back on Ornstein, the knight was silently staring at him; whatever he was thinking, hidden beneath the lion's face. After a moment, he said, "Step aside."

At once, Rhea, Rickert, Tarkus, and Petrus, all looked to Solaire with a matching expression of confusion. Solaire met their eyes in turn. He nodded. "Do as he says."

Hesitantly, their group split in halves, and when it was done, Ornstein sauntered down the chasm between them, pulling up his spear to his chest. His helm's eye slits were fixated on Seath.

Priscilla spun on the knight's approach. She growled and hoisted up her scythe, but Ornstein didn't so much as flinch. He simply strolled past her.

It was Seath, then, whose attention the knight had caught. The monster's pale eyes narrowed down on the approaching man in the lion's headed helm and the dragon roared.

Ornstein was big-big enough to stand taller than Tarkus and on height with Priscilla-but beneath the looming tower of Seath, the knight looked like a child's plaything.

A swirl of cursed mist pooled in Seath's jaws. Ornstein's legs bent at the knees.  
Seath unleashed his attack and-

-Ornstein dashed forth with that inhuman speed Solaire had faced against in Anor Londo's Great Chapel. It carried the knight well beneath the trail of blinding blue light that sought to curse him and into Seath's belly. He leaped for the dragon's tentacle and clawed himself up a narrow stretch

of the thing before scrambling forth to the thicker bit near to the dragon's body. Seath wailed and made to claw the armored man clinging to him away, but Ornstein stepped back from the attack and leaped again. His hands took hold of Seath's protruding ribs and the man began using them as a makeshift ladder, clawing and climbing his way up the monster's chest. Seath snapped at the air, pooled another attack in his jaws, and-

-Ornstein made one final leap, the tip of his spear angled up towards the beast's jugular.

In the end-quite fittingly, Solaire thought-it had been the Dragonslayer who had slayed the dragon.

Ornstein's spear sunk so deeply within Seath's throat, the beast could not even muster so much as a roar. The dragon's eyes simply bulged in their sockets, the claws came up weakly to swat the air, and then the scaleless monster was falling.

Seath crashed to the cavern floor, kicking up a storm of dust and debris and leaving a small crater splintering out in a spider's web around the impact. Ornstein pulled his spear loose and shoved off at the last moment, landing beside his fallen opponent's snout; the nostrils at its tip flared once, twice, then never flared again.

"Father!" Priscilla cried, dashing forth at once to the dead dragon. She gave Ornstein a wide berth and collapsed beside Seath's mostrous head, stroking lovingly at his brow and sobbing against his scaleless flesh.

Ornstein did not seem interested in the crossbreed or her sorrow. He turned from her, fixed his helm upon Solaire, and approached.

Tarkus and Rickert where at his sides in a flash, and he knew Rhea was at his back with her talisman held at the ready. Solaire was thankful for his friends and for their loyalty, but as he watched Ornstein draw near, he didn't think he'd need them.

The Dragonslayer halted a mere few feet away. For a moment, he was silent and as still as stone. Then he took a step forward, bowed his head, and lowered to a knee. "I did not believe it. How could I? The boy had been taken away so long ago... and to see him return before my own eyes. To see the man he'd grown into." Ornstein lifted his head. "How could I believe such a miraculous thing without proof? I was angry. Angry that someone would dare pose as the child I'd cradled in my arms when he'd wake from a nightmare as a babe and wiped tears from the little thing's cheek till he slept once more. And even when I glimpsed that lightning... that wonderful thing my Lord of Sunlight had wielded so effortlessly in his war against the dragons... my mind still refused it.

"But now... you have lifted the veil from my eyes as well as my mind. You are the child. Son of Gwyn, the greatest warrior I've ever known, and if

you'd have me..." His head lowered again. "I would serve you for the rest of my days. As I served your father before you... my Lord."

Tarkus' hand fell on Solaire's shoulder. When he faced his friend, Tarkus' eyes were widened incredulously. "You..." His gaze swept Solaire. "Abby was right? You're... you're..."

"The true and proper Lord of Lordran," Ornstein finished for him.

Solaire looked at his hands. Hands of a man, not a God, he thought. But there is no running from this any longer. When he looked back to Tarkus, he clapped his hand on the man's shoulder. "This changes nothing, Tarkus."

"This changes everything!" Rickert said, stepping to his other side. "Solaire... Gods, Solaire, we can win! To Izalith with Logan and his damned Darkwraiths! We've got the son of a God on our side!"

"I... I am no better than any of you," Solaire insisted. "We stand together, not-"

"Solaire," Tarkus began, "You told me before the time for hubris and bravado had passed. And you were right. But now let me tell you something. The time for humility has passed as well, and the time to lead is upon you. So seize it and lead, my friend." He smiled. "My brother." He lowered to a knee and held a fist to his chest. "My Lord."

Solaire fished for words and came up empty, and before he could throw a reel back into the pool of his mind, Rickert and Rhea were lowering to a knee as well. Petrus lumbered forth and did the same.

Priscilla came last, stepping slow and cautious to the circle of kneeling humans with her scythe held defensively before her in one hand, and the glowing Lord Soul she'd taken from her dead father in the other. Her eyes were red and rheumy and twice she had to swipe a rogue tear from her cheek as she held Solaire's look.

"Priscilla, I'm sorry for your loss, but please do not take it out on my friends and I. We must-"

"It is not you I seek vengeance against," the crossbreed hissed. "I want your mad sorcerer's head at my feet for the cruelties my father and I endured at his mad hands! I want Logan! If you're going after him... our cause is the same."

Solaire nodded. He looked between Priscilla and Ornstein. "The two of you have expressed your anger towards humanity more than once before me. Know now, I will never turn my back on them. Under my command... humans are your equal."

Ornstein was as silent and reticent as ever.

Priscilla narrowed her eyes on the group, but said nothing.

"Priscilla?"

The crossbreed returned her eyes to his. "Six of you? If I join your ranks... seven? How can you defeat this mad sorcerer if you tell it true and he has an army of Darkwraiths at his command with a force of seven?"

Solaire wished he had an answer, but he did not. "We have more numbers at the Undead Parish. If Logan has not acted against them yet... it strengthens our chances."

"And if he has?" Rhea spoke from her position knelt at his side. "If it only us against him... can we truly win, Solaire? The seven of us against an army?"

"Nine," Rickert corrected. "Let us not forget about the good witch and our drunken knight down in Izalith."

Tarkus shook his head. "Quelana is a powerful ally. If she returns to us, our chances are far greater than they'd be without her. Lautrec, though... I wouldn't count on a man like that."

"No. Neither would I," Rhea added. "The knight of Carim cares only for himself and his drink. If he wasn't with Quelana, I'd doubt we'd evereven see him again."

Solaire's thoughts turned to Lautrec. They had fought together, side-by- side, in defense of the Archives. After Ornstein, the golden knight was likely the next best warrior he'd ever had the privilege to stand before. "Lautrec is a decent man. He will return to us. Him and Quelana both. I know it in my heart to be true."

"Nine then," Priscilla said. "What hope do nine hold against a foe as fearsome and tenacious as the Darkwraiths?"

"A small hope," Solaire admitted. "But a hope nonetheless."

Priscilla stared at him. The answer, clearly, was not what she was looking for. After a long moment, and perhaps out of nothing more than realizing her options numbered few, she sighed, stepped forward, and handed Solaire the Lord Soul. Then, with a sweep of her eyes across the party, she lowered to a knee herself.

Solaire looked over the six gathered around him on their knees, soul shard in hand, and bowed to each of them in turn. "I will lead you, my friends. But I am no better than you. We stand against Logan with the one thing Logan does not, and will not, ever have. Unity."

It was Ornstein who spoke first after a long gap of quiet. "Your command then... my Lord?"

Solaire faced the long sprawl of cave that led back outside. "Logan's treacheries against the innocent have gone unpunished long enough." He turned back to his waiting party. "And it is time we brought some justice upon the mad sorcerer. Rise, friends, and let us pry Lordran back from the wizard's grip and bring about a new era of light to this dark world of ours.

"Praise the Sun."

Chapter 58

"Oh, my dearest Abigail, forever will my love prevail,  
brought forth to me, your kindest heart, that I shall hold before we part, and you and I shall be entwined, forever and ever, beautiful and true, my dearest, dearest, Abigail-  
-the sweetest thing I ever knew."

Thunder growled overhead, accentuating the song's final line. Abby's eyes flickered open, but the task wasn't easy, and-in truth-was growing more arduous with every passing day. There was mud in the cracks of her lips and in the corners of her eyes and in the nooks of her ears and every one of her senses was flat and muted. She lifted a filthy hand to swipe at her filthy brow, and when it was cleared, her gaze floated up to the rim of her grave.

It was night and there was no moon. Gone, Abby thought, a fresh spike of terror driving up through her stomach to pierce her heart. The moon is gone because the world is gone and I am dead. She launched into a fit of coughs that served both to clear her coarse throat as well as her mad thoughts, and when they ended, she pulled a breath of cold air, hugged the scant rags they'd left her as a 'blanket' and looked to the rim of the grave once more.

Still no moon-clouds were too swollen and black overhead to allow such a beautiful thing into such a dark, bleak, place as her pit-but there was something above. Abby squinted, swiped her eyes again, lifted her head. Thunder trembled the bedding of mud and rock beneath her, and after a moment, her eyes found her serenader.

He was a mass of formless grey in the night, perched on the edge of a tombstone. The man was as still as the stone he rested upon, and as the rain beat down on him, he was under the protection of a hat whose brim was so maddeningly wide, it shielded his entire, robed, body from the storm seeking to soak it. His head was cocked on its side; his eyes,

shadowed, were almost certainly staring down upon her. Watching.

Lightning tore a seam in the black sprawl of sky behind the silhouette.

The pale flash died so fast, it was if it had not been there at all. But she'd seen enough. The man watching her, the man whose singing had woken her from her sleep, the man stroking his hands together playfully as she laid in a pit of mud, half-starved, half-freezing, and half-dead... was the sorcerer Logan.

Abby was not surprised in the least. In an eight-by-eight hole in the ground, nothing but the relentless rains and her own mind to keep her company, it turned out she had a lot of time to think. And she had thought plenty, drawing to the conclusion that of coursethat queer man who came running out of the Archives the day they fell was not Griggs. She'd watched Logan die to Lautrec's blade, but she had also seen a corpse vanish as quickly as it had been born, and the mad sorcerer, if nothing else, was clever. Griggs didn't speak and he didn't draw much attention, but he had always been listening and always been watching. And, of course, always lingering beside Ben, the Chosen-Abby now knew-he had come to manipulate for his own cruel and greedy purposes. The audacity of Logan's trick was, perhaps, its greatest strength. The sorcerer had hid in broad daylight. And it had worked.

Lightning flashed again. Logan was gone, and the face beneath the big hat belong to Griggs once more.

Abby opened her mouth, but the only sound that trickled out was a hoarse croak.

Logan seized the opportunity to begin singing again.  
"Oh, my dearest Abigail, forever will my love prevail,

and my heart shall wail, beneath the moon's glow - pale, until the day that we both set sail, beneath the lifted fog, that veil, unto the darkness we will trail, oh, my dearest Abigail."

Abby's eyes found the dirty pool of water Ben had provided her for drinking. She clawed her way to its rim-without food, the strength had left her legs, and attempting to stand may have collapsed her-curled up beside it, and scooped her hands beneath the surface to cup water. She tilted her head back and let the warm, dirt-ridden, stuff do what it could to ease her throat and drive her thirst away.

"Quite a poor drink, Abigail, don't you agree? So sad. So tragic. Poor Abigail."

Abby finished, a few rogue trickles running across her cracked lips, and

faced the man again. She cleared her throat. "That's not my name," she managed, though each word was a line of jagged rock reaching up through her neck. "The only person who called me 'Abigail' was my grandmother. And you aren't her. ...you're Logan."

Lightning flashed. Griggs' face had vanished and Logan's returned: a big, beak-of-a-nose, protruding brow, wisps of greying hair that fell like dead straw around his sallow skin. He wore a smile. "Clever little thing, aren't you? Mmm. Yes. Of course your are, Abigail. We knew that about you for a long time, haven't we? Yes. We have. Don't go telling anyone my secret, though, dear. The dead rising to walk among the living tends to... stir the living up a bit. Mmm. Yes."

Abby swiped at her lips. Speaking still hurt, but she had to go on. "You manipulated Ben. I've been in this hole for four sunsets now. I've had lots of time to piece all the terrible things that have happened together. And I've figured you out."

"Mmm. Very good, dear. Go on."  
"It was you who killed that Thomas boy."  
"Yes."  
"And it was you who convinced Ben everyone was acting against him." "Correct."

"And then... then you must have dug up Thomas' body after Domhnall and the rest buried it. You must've known Ben would want to see it. ...you likely planted the idea in his head yourself."

"Yes. All true."

A surge of anger came upon her so violently, she felt like vomiting (though she doubt she had anything within her to vomit, save filthy water and bits of dirt). She'd been hoping he would at least try to deny some ofthe atrocities she'd come up with in her days of suffering, so that, perhaps, the slim chance that no one man could be so irrevocably evil might still exist. His blunt admittance was a far, far, worse thing to hear.

"Why," she shouted, the effort putting further strain on her throat and making her wince. "How could you do such terrible things to so many innocent people!? Thomas... Andre... Sieglinde... Anastacia... Domhnall." Their faces flashed in Abby's mind as she'd seen them last: bloody and lifeless. If she had any more tears to spill, she might've spilled them then. But she couldn't cry. That part of her just didn't function any longer. Because it's gone, she thought. It fled to protect you from another bout of madness and heartache.

"Why have I done these things?" Logan's voice floated softly down upon

her. "My dearest Abigail, surely you've learned something from all of ours talks, haven't you? You're a sharp girl. A reader, like myself. You need only ask yourself: what lies in the heart of every man?"

She glared up into the dark, formless, face beneath the big hat. If she spoke, it would be in shouts, and that would hurt, so she remained silent.

"Greed, Abigail," he answered for her. "Greed is what lies in every man's heart. You only need to know what he desires and how dearly he desires it to know what he's capable of. I desire quite a bit. And I desire it very, very, much. Accordingly, I do what I must. Nothing more."

"You're evil," she croaked, and immediately felt herself reverting to the foolish thing that had been the mad sorcerer's captive in the Archives. Her words were weak-the emotional declaration of a girl, not the thoughtful response of a woman-but the truth of them was so undeniably apparent to her in that moment, she'd said them anyway. "You're just... truly and despicably evil."

"I'm Ambitious, Abigail. And wise. The two in combination? Effective." His head cocked a bit on its side, shaking a splash of rain gathered upon the brim loose. "Funny, though, isn't it... how you could swoon over one killer who does what it takes to get what he wants, and declare the other 'evil'. Mmmm. What cruelty lies within you, my dearest, to speak so callously against me? Ah, yes. I watched you in the Parish. Watched that girlish little twinkle in your eyes when you looked upon your golden knight. One killer worshiped while the other vilified. Oh, life can be so unfair at times, can't it?"

"You kill innocent."

"No man is innocent. You need only peel back the layers of his heart a bit before the black center reveals itself."

"You killed Thomas," she snapped. "Thomas was a child!"

"A weak child," Logan said. "If he were a strong one, a smart one, he'd be alive today, wouldn't he? Those who lose their life did not deserve it in the first place. You expect me to coddle weakness, Abigail? You coddle weakness, you cultivateweakness. Surely you don't want an army of cravens and simpletons growing up to defend all you hold dear, do you? The weak die so the strong can strive. It is the way of things. It is progression. Those you've lost... I know you feel great sadness for them. But our new world, trust me, will be better of without them."

She felt such profound contempt for the creature perched above her grave, Abby trembled with rage. Her eyes scanned the bed of mud beneath her and landed upon a rock. She reached for it slow, so as no to draw attention, and closed her fist around it.

"Aren't you curious why I'm here, my dear?" Logan went on. "Believe it or

not, my intentions weren't to come make you despise me even more than you already do. Hmmm. No. I wouldn't want that, Abigail. Not at all." The outline of his hat lifted back. His eyes, flashing briefly against the lightning, were pointed skywards.

Abby threw her rock with as much force as her nutrient-deprived muscles would allow.

Logan's hand materialized before his face with inhuman speed. He'd caught the rock. His hat lowered back to her and a soft rumble of laughter drifted from beneath. "My time with our friend, Benjamin, is drawing to its close," he went on as if she hadn't just tried smashing his face, "and as one Chosen's use drys up, it is the other I wish to ensure to my cause."

Abby had barely heard him; she was already looking for another rock.

"In truth... I never much liked the boy. He's rather... simple. Emotional. Prideful. Jealous. He has the traits of a babe, fresh from the cradle. Mmm. Easy to use, certainly, but... a child's use only goes so far, doesn't it?"

She found another rock and reached for it.

"Abigail, please stop throwing rocks at me, my dear."

"You're not manipulating me as you did Ben," she said. "I don't care what you have to say. And I know what you truly want with me. I heard Ben and Patches talking. They said you wanted to have my tongue and eyes removed." She grimaced.

"Ah, yes. I did say that. I assure you, though, the only intention my words carried were ensuring Ben I had no desire for you. But I do, my dear. It is not the whining boy I'd sit beside me in the new world we are on the cusp of birthing, but the pretty girl... the one who came to me at the Archives, so pretty, so sweet. Mmm. The one who enjoys books and conversation and laughter." He scooted forth a bit nearer to the grave and leaned in. "Lordran needs a Dark Lord, Abigail, and it is not to be Benjamin. It is to be me. And you... you are to be my Dark Queen. I will keep you close by my side and we will rule together. Doesn't that sound wonderful, dear?"

"If I get close enough to you, I'll kill you," Abby said. It turned out there was strength still left in her yet, somewhere deep within, bottled up in a vile of hatred for the wizard. She closed her fist around a rock and launched it.

Again, Logan caught the attack with ease. He was silent for a long moment, tossing the rock playfully into the air between them as rain pattered on the brim of his hat. He smacked his lips together, stood, and stretched a long, pointed, finger down into her grave. "What's about to happen is your fault, Abigail, for the pain you bring an old man's heart."

He turned, his heavy cloak billowing out behind him as a gust of wind

took it, and vanished beyond the grave's rim.

Abby lay in wait. There was little else she could do. His words had likely meant to bring her fear, but her fears-like her tears-had all but dried up. She wasn't afraid. She just wanted the vile creature-of-a-man dead; as dead as Chester had been after she'd filled his monster's chest with his own crossbow bolt.

Logan returned shortly after. He wasn't alone. Beside him, huddled up against the flowing layers of his robe and clutching dearly to them as she peeked her head out into the rains, a little girl stood. When lightning came again, Abby saw it was a child named Myria, who'd, tragically, lost both her parents in the Archives. She was being taken care off by a kind man and his wife who'd lost their own child to the hollows months earlier. She wore the rotating expressions of one who did not know how to feel.

"What are you doing!?" Abby shouted at once, clawing her way up to kneel in the muds.

Logan knelt himself, gently taking the girl by the shoulder and guiding her to the rim of the grave. The child's little wisps of blonde hair swirled around her widened eyes as the storm brought wind across them. Logan smiled and stroked a hand against her cheek.

"Sweet thing isn't she?"

"What are you doing!?" Abby repeated. She tried standing, but her heel slipped in the mud, and the only thing she accomplished was falling back on her ass again.

"Do you know our friend Abigail, sweetness?" Logan asked the child. Myria's eyes moved to his. She bit her lip. She nodded.  
"Do you know why she's in this pit?"  
The girl tugged at his robes. She shook her head.

"She was bad," Logan explained. "And now she's being cruel. When you're bad and cruel... you get punished."

Lightning flashed. Atop the girl's shoulder, Abby saw the shine of a dagger's blade, creeping up towards the girl's throat. It was sharpened to a fine point.

"No!" Abby pleaded.

Logan ignored her and asked the child, "You wouldn't ever be bad, dear, would you?"

The girl wiped rain-soaked hair from her brow. She shook her head.

"Of course not," Logan cooed, his smile widening. "Though... you are an orphan. You're far too young at the moment, thankfully, to understand injustice and cruelty, but someday you will think back on all you've been denied and wonder 'why me?'. When that day comes, you may use that anger and uncertainty to fall into a life of crime, or even murder, taking from others what was once taken from you. You might cause a great deal of pain... should you grow up." The blade moved closer to the girl's throat.

"Please..." Abby muttered. "Please!"

Logan's gaze floated lazily back to Abby. "What was that, Abigail? Please? Why, what ever are you begging me for? After all, I'm an evil old man, left unchecked and unaided by a sweet, Dark Queen, to whisper words of kindness in my ear." He slid the dagger right up against the soft flesh of the little girl's throat. "And an evil old man only knows his evil old ways." He laughed.

"Alright!" Abby pleaded. "I'll do as you say. I won't deny you anything. Please just let that girl return to camp, Logan. Please."

"Mmmm," the sorcerer hummed. He tapped a long, bony, fingers against the flat top of the daggers, sending a series of clicks to join the pattering of rain upon his hat's brim. He looked from the little girl to Abby and back. He sighed. "Alright, dear. Run along back to camp. Your future Dark Queen has paid you a kindness. What do you say?"

Myria's eyes flittered between the two of them with uncertainty. "...thank you?" She croaked.

"That's right. Go on, then. And not a word of this to anyone, alright dear?"

She nodded and Logan released her from his clutches. The little thing went scampering off back through the night at once.

"You see, Abigail?" Logan said, rising himself. "Together, we will be worshipped. My wisdom and ambition along with your beauty and kindness? Oh, our new Lordran will have its first Gods worth kneeling before in a very, very, long time."

Abby said nothing. She feared if she did, and a bit of the utter contempt swirling within her for Logan slipped out, the poor little girl's life might be in jeopardy again.

"Alright, my dearest Abigail. I believe that concludes tonight's discussion. I've given you much to think about, and think about it you will, or... tonight, I may not be as kind to our little orphan girl as I was tonight. Do you understand, dear?"

She nodded.  
"Good. Farewell for now then, Abigail. And rest easy, dear. It won't be long

till you are the only Chosen. Mmm. Yes. Not long at all."

He trailed off into the storm and vanished beyond the grave's rim; soft giggles turning to a melodic whistle that matched the tune he'd first woken her with in song.

Abby stared after him for a long time, her mind more sharp and alert than it had been since the day she watched Ben burn the church down and murder her friends in cold blood. Logan's words and threats had, likely, meant to win her obedience to him, but all the mad sorcerer had accomplished was awakening a realization in her: Logan had to die.

She drifted to sleep shortly after with that very thought racing around her head over nad over... in an endless cycle.

-o-o-o-

The next morning was plagued with more rains and more winds, and as Abby woke and laid listening to the storm brew its fury outside her hole and she watched the grey clouds swirl in the grey skies, she wondered if it was only her mind playing tricks on her that the weather lately had been taking a turn for the worse; far worse than it had been only days earlier. Worse and worse since the day the church burned and so many lives were lost, she thought. Sadness came. She staved it away. She was getting good at that.

It wasn't long before Patches came. He'd been coming to her-quite begrudgingly-every morning for the last three days, making sure she drank, and forcing bits of moldy bread upon her so that she did not starve. He often mumbled and cursed under his breath about Ben assigning him as her 'bloody babysitter', but other than that, they had not spoken.

That morning, he looked particularly moody as he cast his length of rope down to pool into a coil in the mud, climbing down to join it shortly after. He eyed her once, briefly, and knelt beside her to fish her moldy breakfast and a drinking cup from his satchel.

"Patches..." She croaked.

He did not bother looking at her as he pulled the bread free. "Quiet, girl. Eat."

She took it, tore a bit of mold free, and bit into it at once. In truth, she hardly had the stomach to eat (she believed it was all the rain water she'd been drinking that had raised havoc in her stomach), but she did not wish to further agitate Patches. Not on that morning, when there was work yet to be done. She finished it as quickly as she could, battling against her protesting stomach and soar throat to swallow, and bowed her appreciation. "Thank you."

He dunked the drinking cup beneath the pool of rain water, filling it to

the brim, and passed it to her. She took it, trying her best to still her shaking hands, and drank at once. She finished the entire thing before him, and when she finished, she smiled and thanked him again. When he went to take the cup back, she covered his hand in her own.

Patches scowled. "What's the matter with you, girl!?" He yanked his hand free and packed away the cup.

"Patches, please listen to me."

"Are you bloody mad?" He growled. "Or are you just trying to get my head taken off my shoulders? Is that it? Don't talk to me." He stood, turned, and took hold of the rope.

Her window of opportunity rapidly closing shut, Abby reached for his ankle and said, "Patches, the man with Ben who calls himself 'Griggs' is not who he appears to be."

"I - don't - care!" Patches yanked his foot loose and hovered it menacingly over her head, as if he would bring it down upon her skull if she made to grab it again.

"His name is Logan," she went on anyway, fighting to keep the desperation from her voice but failing, "He was the mad sorcerer at the Duke's Archives that imprisoned me and nearly cost everyone their lives. He is the true embodiment of evil, Patches, and he has to be destroyed!"

Patches, for the first time, looked at least mildly interested in her words. His brow wrinkled in pensive lines and he ran a hand against his chin. After a moment, though, his eyes narrowed on her's and the scowl surfaced on his face once more. "Piss off."

"He's going to kill you."

Patches froze with his hands wrapped around the rope and one foot planted in the wall of the grave, ready to lift him back to the world outside. He turned to her. "...you're lying, girl. Don't bloody lie to me or I'll-"

"I'm not. I know that man, Patches. He is doing to Ben what he did to me at the Archives. He's trying to make him paranoid, like everyone is against him, including you, and that Logan is his only friend. It's how he wins your trust." Her thoughts turned, briefly, to the numerous and lengthy 'chats' Logan had had with her. She remembered thinking they felt like dreams after they'd finished, and she'd often struggled to recall the words exchanged. But she'd always felt a bit closer to the sorcerer and a bit further away from everyone else at their conclusion. "Logan has allowed you to live for this long because he sees some purpose in you. But, Patches... he is going to make a move against Ben soon. When he does... you won't have a purpose anymore."

Patches stared at her. "I... how could you-" "Just listen to me. Please. You have to kill him."

The bald man barked mirthless laughter into her face. "You are bloody mad, aren't you?"

Abby sighed. "Then sneak me a dagger and I'll kill him myself."

Patches released the rope and faced her with his arms crossed against his chest. "You're going to kill him, ey? Hee-hee. That'd be quite the amusing thing to see." He scratched his head. "And if this man truly is that 'Logan' fellow, didn't you swear up and down at the Archives, in Lautrec's defense, that the gold knight killed the sorcerer?"

"He... he came back to life."

"Ooooh!?" Patches laughed then with plenty of mirth. "So, let me get this straight, girl. You want me to kill the mad sorcerer, whose somehow found a way to make himself immortal, whose somehow found a way to steal another man's flesh and parade about in it without a care in the world, and who now sits as Ben's right-hand man at the head of his army of Darkwraiths? That it? Is that all you're bloody requesting of me ya mad, bloody, thing?"

Abby pulled a breath to keep her composure. "I told you, I'll do it myself. Just sneak me a dagger."

"This hole is turning yer damned mind to mush," Patches said, turning back to his rope. "You'd be wise to keep yer trap shut around Ben and Griggs if ya know what's good for ya, girl."

"You're not a bad man, Patches," she said.

He halted.

"You say a lot of terrible things, but you don't do many." She was telling the truth. She'd had plenty of time while formulating her plan the previous night to consider it. Patches was as foul-mouthed as any man she'd ever met, constantly cussing and making threats and joking about crude acts and sexual practices, but he hadn't actually acted on any of his many, many, claims since she'd met him. His only despicable act was throwing Lautrec off the bridge in the Burg that day so long ago, but the bald man had claimed it was in protection of both her, Quelana, and himself. Abby didn't know if that was true or not, but Lautrec had lived and so had they, and for then: it was enough to let go.

"Please, Patches. You're nota bad man. If you kill Logan and rescue me from this pit, I will swear to that very fact before anyone that we come across. I promise you."

Patches was quiet a moment, his eyes still held on the rope between his hands. "...ain't no one left, girl. Just Ben and his Darkwraiths..."

"Solaire lives. You know that. Tarkus and Rickert and Lady Rhea... they all went with him. Lautrec and Quelana, too."

"You think Lautrec is going to listen to your case that I'm a bloody 'hero'? I threw the pisser-of-a-man off a damned bridge!"

"He's changed, Patches. He cares for Quelana, and she's made him change. He spared Anastacia, he'll spare you."

"I don't need to be spared by some arrogant, golden, bastard. I'm doing quite well for myself here, and-"

"You're lying," she interjected. "Whether it's to me or to yourself, I do not know, but you are lying, Patches. I hear the way Ben talks to you. Even if Logan fails when he acts against him, Ben no longer sees you as a 'friend'. Logan has poisoned his mind and assured that."

Over the man's shoulder, she could see the uncertainty wash across Patches' face, and in that moment, she actually felt sympathy for the Hyena. He likely never had any true friends, and she'd just informed him the closest thing he'd found to one was a lie. After a long moment of silence, he shook his head, took up the rope, and climbed out of the grave.

"Patches..." Abby muttered; one last desperate plea.

The bald man's reply was to yank the slack of rope up into his hands, flick a cursory glance across her features, and vanish beyond the grave's rim.

Abby laid her head back into a pillow of mud and watched the rain beat upon her face. That is it then, she thought. She'd weighed every option she had that morning, and realized Patches was her last hope.

And her last hope had just abandoned her.

-o-o-o-

The day dragged on, as the days within her pit often did, and the storm worsened and worsened overhead. Abby dozed off twice, but each time, one of Ben's assigned 'watchers' came upon her and doused her with a bucket of water. She'd awoken gasping for air the first few days it had happened, but soon enough, she grew used to it, and being ripped from sleep by a surprise shower no longer carried the same effect. She only opened her eyes, swiped her face clean with the sleeve of her rags, and stared at the varying men and women who she'd, once, called friends and now did Ben's bidding without so much as batting an eye.

Day melted to night, bringing with it a torrent of heavy rain and screaming winds. Abby watched torch light come and go as the camp

moved about their nightly business, but soon enough, that too died down, and then only the sounds of the storm and the black sprawl of night sky remained.

Please don't let him come tonight, she silently prayed, though when she tried figuring out which God she was praying too, she could not decide. Perhaps there are no Gods left in Lordran, she thought, but the idea brought a fresh swirl of anxiety in her chest, and so she cast it aside immediately.

If there were Gods, they did not answer her prayer: long after the chatter and torchlight of the world outside had faded away, he returned.

Logan swayed up to her grave as he had the previous night, the silhouette of his massive hat wobbling and bending and whispering with the sound of beating rain upon its brim. He sauntered right up to the muddy edge and peered in at her. Lightning flashed: he was smiling. Lightning faded: he was an ominous, shadowed, blob once more.

"Abigail?"

Thunder grumbled overhead. Abby tightened her rags to her body. "I'm awake. There's no need to sing to me."

That childish giggle trickled down into her pit from beneath his hat. "You don't like my singing voice, dear?"

"No."

"You hurt my feelings, my dear. Are you being cruel again? Perhaps I should go have a visit with our little, orphaned, friend again, mmm?"

"I'm sorry," Abby pleaded at once. "I didn't mean to upset you. Please don't hurt that child."

Lightning flashed: Logan's smile had widened, his eyes were red, it looked like fangs were protruding from the corners of his lips. Lightning faded: darkness. "Have you considered my offer, Abigail?"

She swallowed. "I have."

"Mmm. And what conclusions have you drawn, I wonder?"

"...that I will do as you require... as long as you do not hurt anymore innocent people." And one day, while you sleep, I'll fill your body with death as I filled Chester's.

"Mmm. Very good. You're lying, of course, but I do appreciate the effort." He laughed.

"Logan... will you answer me something truthfully?"

His head cocked a bit on its side. "For you, my dear? I will answer anything you may so desire with truth."

"How did you survive at the Archives when Lautrec buried his shotel into the side of your neck?"

The sorcerer was quiet a moment, perhaps taken aback by the bluntness and nature of her inquiry, then, "Best for only me to know that one, my dear. After all, what is a man without his little stash of secrets? Mmm."

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them: "You're not a man, you're a monster in a man's skin."

The silhouette of Logan's hat shook back and forth. "Abigail, Abigail, Abigail. So cruel are you. This time... I don't think I can let your cruelty go unpunished. Let us find out together what that little orphan girl's insides look like, hmm?"

"No! I'm sorry! It was an accident!" Abby pleaded.

"Even accident's must be punished at times," Logan explained. Soft laughter rumbled beneath his hat and he began turning away.

Lightning flashed: Patches stood behind the sorcerer, intense focus gripping every inch of his face, a dagger clutched tightly within the white knuckles of his hand. He reached around Logan's shoulders.

Lightning faded: Logan's gasp was choked short, replaced by a gurgle, and the sorcerer's shadowed body sprung forth into the grave as if he'd been kicked.

The sorcerer laid sprawled at Abby's feet, motionless in the mud.

Abby's heart hammered in her chest. She pried her eyes from Logan to the rim of the grave, where Patches' bald silhouette stood waiting.

"You better be damned right about all that madness you spewed yesterday, girl! Get your damn skinny-ass over here!"

Abby could barely hold a thought in her head. She clambered up out of the muds, fell, tried again, fell, and finally was successful on the third attempt. She dug her hands into the sheet of dirt that was the grave's walls and used it to steady herself as she stepped around Logan's body and found Patches' waiting hand floating halfway down to her. She reached for it and-

-halted.

"What the bloody hell are you doing! Come on!" Patches whispered furiously upon her.

Abby turned back to Logan. He was still motionless. As he was after

Lautrec killed him, she thought. "Give me your dagger, Patches."

"What!?"

"Give it here. Please."

"Gods, what am I doing!?" Patches whined, but handed her the dagger nonetheless. "I'm at the whim of a mad-woman!"

Woman. She closed her hands around the dagger's hilt and approached the fallen sorcerer. Thunder boomed across the skies overhead, and a moment later, lightning washed the grave in a dim, pale, glow. Logan was not breathing. She stepped over him and kneeled on the small of his back. For Domhnall and everyone else you had a treacherous hand in harming, she thought, raised the blade high, and drove it into his back. It sunk in with a squishy thuck and Abby felt blood pool around her knuckles. It's cold, she thought. Like a serpent's. The thought reminded her she was not finished. She yanked the dagger loose, lifted it, and drove it down again. And again. And again. And when she finally stopped, the mad sorcerer's back was nothing but tattered rags and crimson pools.

"By the bloody Gods would you come on, girl!" Patches pleaded behind her.

She rose, turned, and made to grab his hand.

Instead, Logan's hand wrapped her ankle.

She spun back, her heart and breath frozen in her chest, and saw the shadowed lump of Logan's corpse crawling forth in the mud. A shrill whine was seeping from beneath the monster's massive hat, and the hand he'd gotten around her ankle tightened with such inhuman strength, she thought he was going to crush it.

Then Patches got her wrist and pulled and her foot slipped through his mud-caked hand. She spun on him in desperation, leaped for him, and Patches got a hold of her under the arms. He was lifting her free when Logan's hand once again fell upon her leg. She felt long, slender, fingers trickle against the back of her calf, sliding down to close around her ankle once more. When lightning came again, she saw a look of absolute dread on Patches face as he stared into the pit at whatever was trying to take hold of her.

Then she was out of the pit, tumbling into his arms, and the two of them went collapsing into the muddy plains that made up the grave's grounds.

Patches clambered to his feet in a panic, scooped his arms up under Abby's legs and shoulders, and lifted her. He made a mad sprint for the other end of the cemetery, throwing any sense of caution to the wind.

"Patches!" Abby shouted over the winds and the symphony of their

combined, gasping, breaths. "What did you see!?"

Patches hauled her off into the night and did not answer for a long, long, time. When he finally did, the only word he could muster at first was: "Death."

"...I saw death."

Chapter 59

As he watched the winds sweep dustings of ice and snow across the barren tundra that was Lost Izalith, Lautrec felt neither alive nor dead, and he wondered whether his insides had turned as barren as the lands themselves. At the Archives, Abby had stolen his purpose out from under him, and afterwards, he had felt very bad, but a piece of him knew he was still yet a living thing. Now, he wasn't so sure. He had entered Izalith, the lands men once believed to be the grounds where the souls of the wicked and damned went to be forever tortured for the cruel lives they'd lived. Well, he had lived quite a cruel life. He had killed quite a good number of men. And now his soul did reside in Lost Izalith, amongst the ice and the nothingness, and he knew then that it would never leave. There was simply no reason. He'd come to Izalith seeking a soul, and instead had damned his own: a final, bitter, jest on a life that had been utterly devoid of humor.

Wind came harder, and atop the frozen rock he was perched upon, it wrapped him in a fist of pure ice. He might've shivered-should have, as he was wearing only his leathers-but he did not. He only let it grab him, let it swirl, let it pass, and then he was alone again, and that was better. Across the plains, beyond the veil of endless snows, a rock cracked free from the mountainous wall and plummeted into a bed of ice. He watched it, both seeing and not seeing, both hearing and not hearing, both living and dead, and wished the rock had fallen on him instead.

How long will it take to die? He wondered. He hadn't eaten in a long time. He didn't remember drinking, but he supposed the blond woman (witch) who'd been taking care of him might've made him while he was under her spell. Maybe you can't die. Maybe that is to be your fate. A life that stretches on as endless as Izalith's plains, just as cold, just as empty. He laughed: a mirthless, grating, sound that did not echo and was lost at once in another gust of wind.

He'd woken in the same chamber of ice that had greeted him on his last awakening, though this time, there was no blonde witch waiting to shatter his world; only a small, crackling, bonfire, and a heavy fur blanket draped across his body. Beneath the blanket, he'd found his wounds were freshly dressed once more, and peeking under the stained bandages, he saw the damned things were starting to heal over too. Somehow, the sight of his body healing itself sickened him, so he hadn't lingered long on it. He'd clambered off the bedding of web with a listless pace that Lautrec thought matched well with the cold, stumbled outside the narrow tunnel connecting the room to the rest of Izalith, and found the coven of witches where he'd seen them last: gathered in a circle around... the dead thing. Yes, just a dead thing, he'd thought, averting his eyes from the scene at once, Just a death thing, as all living things are destined to one day be. As, hopefully, I will be soon.

Izalith's daughters did not seem particularly interested in him. He cast cursory glances their way as he passed and found each of their eyes (the blonde's a sky blue; the spider-creatures' an emerald green... as her's had been) moving in his direction, but none of them spoke and none of them moved. They only went on in silent prayer around their fallen sibling; a circle of witches in a circle of death, gathered in a frozen land that had most certainly died as well. Standing in the same room as the dead thing (just a dead thing; nothing more) awoke a swirl of emotion that he simply could not deal with, so Lautrec did not linger there either. He'd passed through quickly, finding a crack splintering a seam within the curved wall of the chamber's belly and slipping through without any true purpose or intent other than to escape the dead thing's presence.

That was how he'd found himself perched atop a stone walkway that wrapped around Izalith's outer rim, watching the winds sweep the tundra and contemplating how long he might have to endure it before death came for him as it had her.

He lifted a hand to his forehead and pinched his brow, cupping his eyes into the darkness of his hand. I need a drink, he thought. Sorrow cannot live while its drowning. That lesson had been apparent enough in the Parish after the Archives fell, but Lautrec doubted anything as useful as wine had ever made its way into a land as utterly useless as Izalith, and so he returned to the one task that brought some mild sense of relief to the pain that wracked his heart: wondering when he'd die.

It was with those thoughts he sat pondering when the witch came to him.

She came stepping delicately and deliberately out of the shadowed crack in the wall, as if she were some wild doe approaching a forest pond for a drink of water. Her hood was pooled at her shoulders, revealing flowing locks of pale-blonde hair that framed a face which was pretty, but nothing compared to the dead thing (nothing more). The frozen chips of diamond that were the witch's eyes held curiously on his own as she neared, but her footsteps halted at the rim of striking distance. Lautrec did not blame the creature. He'd nearly strangled her to death the last time she got close. In truth, he was surprised she'd let him wake from her spell at all.

Lucky me, he thought bitterly, pried his gaze from the witch, and returned it to Izalith's barren tundra. He preferred the the look of the land to the look of the witch . The land didn't remind him of the dead thing.

After a long moment of quiet, only the swirling winds that, somehow, seeped through every crack in the cavernous dome that was Izalith's walls and roof, the witch spoke; soft and quiet. "Who is 'Ana'?

He flicked his eyes to her and narrowed them.  
She stood waiting for reply. When he did not afford her one, she

furrowed her brow and tried again, "Did you not hear me, human? Who is 'Ana'?"

Just another dead thing, he nearly replied, reconsidered, and didn't bother. He looked back to the frozen plains.

"I ask," the witch went on anyway, "because while you slept, you muttered two names repeatedly. One was my sister's. The other was this 'Ana'. You claimed you cared deeply for my sister, yet you spoke this second name with just as much passion. So tell me, human, where does your love lie truly?"

Love. He nearly laughed at the absurdity of the word. He'd never used it, not since he was a naive boy whispering it in the girls' ears that used to gather around Carim's courtyard, and had no intentions of ever even considering speaking it then. Instead, he faced the witch and asked, "Do you know what wine is?"

She studied his face a moment before answering, "Yes. A drink that ruins your human minds."

Accurate enough. "Do you have any?"

"No."

"Then just leave me here to die. I don't want to get to know you. I don't want you to get to know me. I'm never leaving Izalith. This is my grave, and I'd rather lie in it alone."

Her eyes bore into his. "I'm only asking for your consideration. I can take the reigns of your mind and make you answer if that is what you desire."

He held her gaze. Somewhere buried deep in his chest, a familiar anger flared, but even that could not crawl out of the emptiness that now filled him. Once, he may have had some witty retort, but that was before the emptiness took him, and the only thing he could muster then was a sigh: the time-tested sound of a man defeated. He looked to the distant fingers of stone poking up into the blizzard on the horizon and imagined being impaled upon one.

"'Ana' is Anastacia. Anastacia... is my sister." He turned to the witch. "Dead now, though. Same as yours." Where do you go when you die, Ana? I need to know now more than ever. "Tell me, witch: you have several dead siblings. Do you see them walking in the snows or floating up to the surface of those frozen lakes littering the tundra?"

She shook her head.  
"No? Just me?" He nodded. "Madness it is, then."  
The witch stepped closer. Lautrec watched her, wishing he had his

shotels; not to kill her, but to keep her at bay. He didn't want to so much as look at her let alone come close enough to, perhaps, smell the scent of her hair or skin. If it was anything like her dead sister's... he wasn't sure he could handle it.

The witch came anyway, ignoring his glare and tensed posture, and laid her hand atop his own. Her skin was soft and reminded him of another's touch-one he would never feel again-and all at once Lautrec considered grabbing for the witch's neck as he had the last time they'd spoken with the hopes she'd simply burn him to death before he got the chance.

"In the old times," she began quietly, "before man rose his kingdoms above, and the world was a more... magical place, it was said that a love lost, if true and pure, would return to watch over and protect the living. If you are seeing your dead sister, human, it is not madness. It is kindness. She must have cared very much for you."

Lautrec ripped his hand out from under the witch's. "That's more mad than anything. I spent my adult life hunting my sister down with the intention of killing her myself."

"And did you?"

If it hadn't been for the girl and her little 'calming trick' I would have. He peeked over the stone barrier flanking them and peered into the nearest frozen lake. There were no dead things floating about beneath the surface. "I couldn't. It wasn't as simple as a 'change of heart', though. In the end... I may have forgiven my sister, but it wasn't entirely of my own doing."

"It matters not how you heal old wounds, only that you do." She covered his hand again. This time, he did not move it. "Forgiveness is, perhaps, your kinds' greatest achievement. It allows you humans to cast aside the greed that relentlessly drives you and achieve something more."

Lautrec faced her. "Do you 'forgive' me for trying to strangle you?"

She nodded. "I do."

"Then do me a favor, witch, and kill me. Burn me. Take a blade across my throat. Smash my damned head in with a rock. I don't care. There's nothing left for me in this life but suffering. Let it end if you forgive me. ...let it end so that I may find where you go when you die..." Faces cycled through his mind's eye: his mother, his father, Ana's... her's. "Let it end so that I may find out if the Gods are kind and permit you to join the ones who've gone before you."

Her hand squeezed his till his eyes found her own. "You can't die yet, human. Your work is not done."

"My work?"

"Don't you care about Lordran's fate?"

"No." It was true. It may have been a terrible thing-a damning thing-but it was true. The only things he was interested in had already left Lordran, and the only things yet remaining could fend for themselves.

She nodded. "I see. That is... a good thing."

He fixed her with a shrewd look. "Good thing? What game are you playing, witch? I've already confessed my desire to die and my lack of interest in this damned, cold, world of ours. What more could you possibly want from me?"

The witch stepped beside him, took hold of the barrier, and peered out into Izalith's emptiness herself; the wind sending her hair dancing about her head in wild tangles. "Before we discuss that, I need more information from you, human. You will give it to me. Or I will take it. Do you understand?"

His reply was an indifferent shrug of his shoulders. When he leaned upon the barrier beside her, it felt as if the entire world's weight above was resting on his back. He wished it would simply collapse him.

"Tell me about my sister."

He faced her. "...is that a jest?"

"I... know it will be difficult for you. You clearly cared a great deal for her, that much is apparent to me now. But I must know. Surely you can understand my curiosity. It sounds like you had estranged relations with yourfamily as well. I'm sorry that no one is left to tell you about your sister... but you remain to tell me about mine. So, please, do so human. Afford me that kindness."

His gaze floated from the witch to his own hands. That old familiar friend of his, anger, had curled them into fists without Lautrec so much as realizing it, but when he stared upon them and pictured the last time they'd taken hold of Quelana, the fists came apart, and Lautrec had to bring his hands together to keep them from trembling. "...what do you want to know..."

"What was she like?"

"Kind," he said at once. "Wise. Powerful. But never ostentatious in her abilities, and never pretentious. ...she wielded caring and empathy as effortlessly as she wielded flames. Men who looked upon her with fear needed only to spend but a few minutes with her for their fears to turn to admiration... and respect. The children she came across loved her and she would often make a display of her flames for them till their eyes went wide and their faces came alive with smiles and laughter. She had an altruism about her in that way. Always giving something to someone." He

could not keep the tremble from his hands any longer, and when he looked upon them they were blurry. "She gave me something, witch. Gave me a chance when no other would. Gave me purpose when my life held none. Gave me a reason to climb out of the despair my world had become in hopes that one day that same world would have her in it." He faced the witch. "You want to know who Quelana was? She was wonderful and smart and loving and brave and when she stood beneath the moonlight she made you thankful your were alive... because in that moment you knew that no matter how dark and cold the world may have grown, true beauty still existed."

A wistful smile came upon the witch as she whispered, "Thank you, human."

Lautrec felt worse than he'd ever had in his life. He slumped against the railing and let his head fall back. Snow drifted onto his brow. It was cold. So was he. "...have I suffered enough for you now, witch?"

She cast her wistful, little, look out into the sprawl of frozen lands beneath them. "There was eight of us in total," she began. "My six sisters and our brother. I was the oldest and Quelana was the youngest, so I had the privilege to watch her entire childhood develop before my eyes." Her smile widened. "It does not surprise me that you speak of her beauty. We all knew Quelana would one day be beautiful. As a child, she was a cute little thing. Curious little thing, too. My sisters and I used to play a game... before the chaos took Izalith to ruin, that is. Quelana liked to explore and hide, so we used to send her out, give her some time, and then start a hunt to find her. It was my sister, Quelaag, who won that game more often than not. She was a warrior, and had a warrior's instincts. She'd spot movement in shadows, or hear the faint grinding of pebbles against earth, and would sneak around to pounce on Quelana from behind and tickle her till her cheeks were red and there were tears in her eyes."

Lautrec's breath was ragged in his chest, and when he faced the witch, she was even blurrier than his hands had been. "Why are you doing this to me?" He croaked.

"One time, though," the witch went on, ignoring him, "we could not find our baby sister for a long, long, time. We searched and searched, and even Quelaag admitted it was as if the our little sister had vanished into thin air. We grew very concerned for Quelana's safety, and so the seven of us set out further from Izalith than we ever had before. We pressed into the lands you humans now call 'the Demon Ruins', and, in truth, would have gone even further, perhaps to the surface itself, if we hadn't found Quelana staring into the swamps you call 'Blighttown', a curious longing on her little face that held wisdom years beyond her age.

"We scooped her up and brought her home at once, and when we were safely away from those strange and foreign lands beyond Izalith, we asked her what she had been doing. Quelana had simply replied, 'I wanted to

see.'. That was all. Just a child and her curiosity. The reason it was remarkable, however, is because none of us ever desired such a thing. We were content with Izalith. It was our home. We knew it. Understood it. Depended on it, in truth, and the world above... we were terrified of. But Quelana... she had an explorer's heart and a sorcerer's curiosity. Even as a child, she wanted to see the world... so I hope you can understand how heartbreaking it was when you told me she believed we thought her a coward when she fled the chaos that destroyed our lands.

"Human... leaving Izalith was about the bravest thing any of us had ever done. We weren't angry with Quelana. We were proud. Our mother and the Lord of Sunlight, Gwyn, fought side-by-side against the dragons, and when Gwyn's hatred for humanity began to seep into his bones, our mother joined in his contempt. In truth, most of us did, too. Your kind is... very terrible at times. But Quelana... she wouldn't believe it. Wouldn't blindly hate something she did not understand. She was very wise in that way, I suppose. When we discovered she'd escaped the chaos and had began sharing our mother's gift of flame with your kind, we were, at first, apprehensive. But we have a link, a very old link, to the world above, and we came to understand that Quelana had done something not wicked, but wonderful. She had brought your people a means to combat the demons and destruction that our mother accidentally unleashed upon you, and for that... we will be forever proud."

"Please," Lautrec said. "I don't want to hear anymore."

"My tale is almost through, human, and then we can discuss what work you have yet to do.

"As I said, the three of us that survived the chaos but yet remained in Izalith kept a link to your world. A very wise and ancient link that was, perhaps, the first thing ever born to Lordran. You may seek to know more about Him in the future, but for now, I digress. With the knowledge that Quelana had began spreading our mother's gifts, the three of us-Quelaag, Quelaan, and myself-devised a plan that would aid our baby sister in her endeavors. Quelaan, who your people refer to as 'The Fair Lady' held a covenant of 'Chaos Servants': humans who served her and fed humanity to her flames. She used a few of these humans to begin construction on a vessel above, in your world."

Lautrec, for the first time since they'd started talking, felt something other than despair stir in him, but he wasn't quite sure exactly what, yet. He frowned. "A... vessel?"

"A boat to be precise."

"Boat?"

"The world of Lordran holds many secrets. Some hidden away in the darkest corners of the lands... some standing in plain sight." She narrowed

her eyes upon his. "You know of the veils of fog that litter your human world above?"

"Fog... yes. I know fog. But I don't understand-"

"Those walls of fog hold a great power within them. The power to create rifts that separate and divide your world. That form walls splitting fearsome foes from courageous adventurers. That lock wandering souls in, while keeping others at bay. The fog is simultaneously Lordran's greatest secret... as well as its most visible one."

"Why are you telling me this, witch?"

"Because there is one final veil of fog in Lordran that no man has ever returned from," she said, tightening her hand atop his own and stepping closer to him. "Beyond the vast, expansive, oceans that swarm around the lands your kind have raised your mighty kingdoms all across... the last bit of fog stands in wait. Waiting to deliver any courageous and brave enough soul that dares cross it away from Lordran... forever."

"...how could you possible know such a thing?"

"Because He told us, and He knows everything there is to know." She pulled a breath, turning to Izalith once more. "Except what lies beyond that ocean fog... no ones knows that except those who've crossed it, I suppose." She sighed and lowered her gaze to her feet. "So we built our sister a boat. A boat that would carry her out of this cold and terrible world... and into whatever world lies next."

That feeling. It was stirring harder in his chest. Lautrec mouth opened, but he found no words. He swallowed, took hold of the witch's arm, and gently turned her to him. "...go on."

"Quelaan's followers finished the boat. It is lying, in fact, right now as we speak, just off the shore near your human meeting ground called 'Firelink Shrine'. Tragically, when Quelaan sent one of her servants to bring Quelana forth to us so we could explain our desires... she was already gone."

"Kirk," Lautrec said at once. "His name was Kirk, wasn't it?"

She frowned. "Y-Yes, but... how could you know that?"

"Quelana said Kirk told her he 'worked' for your sister. The Fair Lady. He'd said she sent him to retrieve her. Said the Fair Lady had a 'gift' for her. Quelana... she thought it was death."

The witch grabbed at her chest. "Oh, my poor baby sister. Of course our gift wasn't death! We only wanted to see her live her dream of exploring and sharing, nothing more."

She's telling you this for a reason. She has to be. Has to be. Has to. "Go on, witch. Please. Go on."

The blonde witch held his eyes. "...what do you now about 'firekeepers'?"

Where do you go when you die, Ana? "I know quite a bit, considering my sister was one."

The witch's brow lifted. "Are you... telling it true?"

"I am. She was not born a 'natural' firekeeper, though. She was made one... as punishment for a mistake she made as a child. A mistake that cost my parents their lives and was the very act that set me on my lifelong pursuit of vengeance."

The witch slowly nodded her head. "I see... then you and I have something in common. My sister, too, is a firekeeper. Quelaan, or 'The Fair Lady' if you prefer."

Lautrec's eyes drifted over the witch's shoulder and narrowed into the shadowed crack they'd emerged from. Distantly, and beside the raised bit of stone that held Quelana's corpse, the two spider-witches were gathered still. Then you haven't killed every firekeeper in Lordran, have you, Logan? One has eluded you.

"My sister is a natural firekeeper," the witch went on. "Why, exactly, our Creators gifted only one of us with such a power, we do not know, but Quelaan is the only one of us whose soul was blessed with that unique gift. Man and Gods alike have been studying the concept of the 'firekeeper' since the Age of Ancients ended and the Age of Fire began. In truth, there has been little progress on either side in understanding the gift... except one, important, discovery."

Hope, Lautrec realized. That is what this feeling is. It's been away so long, I'd nearly forgotten it.

"When a firekeeper parishes-"

"Their soul lives on," Lautrec finished for the witch. "I know this. I know this because a... friend of mine, Solaire, told me a man named Logan captured my sister, believing her to be the world's final firekeeper, and poisoned her to death. Solaire is an honest man, and he swears he saw Anastacia die before his eyes. Saw her breath cease. But then... he said Logan took her soul..." Hope. "..and used it to bring her back. It had even healed her missing tongue."

The witch nodded. "An unusual phenomenon, certainly, but a persistent one. The trick works only once, however, and the next time the firekeeper perishes... the soul is lost forever."

Lautrec grabbed her arm. His breath came in strange pulls. He could feel

the blood beneath the skin moving again; hoping. "Your sister, the Fair Lady, she..."

The witch nodded. "She's never been killed. Her soul remains in tact. But, human, what we are both thinking has never been accomplished in Lordran's history. Your kind were never meant to play God in such a manner."

"But Quelana is not my kind," Lautrec said, fighting to keep the desperation from his voice. "She's your kind. And you... you were born from the flames! You are spawns of it! Children of it! Fire is entwined with every one of your souls!" His eyes moved back to the crack spilling into the chamber beyond. They landed upon Quelana. "You can bring her back to me..." He lowered to a knee, almost instinctively, and took the witch's hand in his own. "You can bring her back to me!"

"I can try," the witch said. "But... human, you must understand something."

"Anything," Lautrec said at once. "Do you hear me, witch? I will do anything."

She nodded. "I know. It is why I needed to speak with you first. I had to be sure you cared enough for her if we are to sacrifice what the three of us will have to sacrifice if Quelana is to return." She glanced back to her sisters. "The act will cost Quelaan her life, and if I attempt this... 'transferal' of her soul, it will likely cost me my own as well. The three of us have spoken much on this very subject while you slept. If Quelaan and myself are to perish... Quelaag does not wish to live on, either. She does not want our baby sister to see her as the deformed beast she's become. Rather, she'd have Quelana remember her as the older sister she was." The witch took a deep breath that released in a sigh. "Human... to bring my little sister back to this world, it will cost all three of us our lives."

Lautrec swallowed. He was too afraid to speak. He could only think of what it would be like to hold her again.

"We are willing to sacrifice ourselves for her," the witch went on, "but you must swear to me, human, that you will do what we never were able to. You must take her away from Lordran. See her to that boat. See her beyond the final veil of fog that encapsulates this world of ours... and see her to whatever may lie beyond. Swear it, human. Swear it to your Gods."

"I swear it," Lautrec said. "Promise it to me."

"I promise. I will take her from this world... and stay at her side in the next. I promise you."

The witch nodded, and after a quiet moment of studying him, said,

"Stand."

He stood at once.

She stepped into his body, took hold of his arms, and raised herself up to kiss his cheek. Her lips were soft against his skin, but he'd barely felt them. His eyes were locked over her shoulder... on Quelana.

"I believe you, human," the witch said. "If this works, there is a tunnel back behind the thicket of branches and roots that guards my mother's soul. It will wind you though a very old path and deposit you into the land known as 'the Great Hollow'. That is where you can find Him if you so desire further answers. He knows much."

Lautrec frowned. "The dragon? You're talking about the Everlasting Dragon?"

She nodded. "Whether you go to him or not, you just make sure my sister escapes this terrible world."

"I will."

"Then come," she said, slipping her fingers between his own and turning to lead him back into the chamber, "and we will see if life affords us at least one kindness in a world that has seen far more cruelty."

Inside the chamber, the coven of witches gathered once more around their fallen sibling. Lautrec's hand was released at the outer rim of their circle, and the eldest witch commanded him to stay back. He obeyed. He was too desperate to do anything more. His thoughts were swirling so quickly, he could barely hold one in his head, but that overwhelming sense of hope prevailed again and again within him as he watched the sisters gather.

The eldest scooped Quelana's body into her arms, Lautrec cringing at the way it looked so limp-so utterly dead-being carried, and brought the fallen sister slowly to the other two. The deformed half-spiders reached out with hands that were ridden with scars and tumors and stroked at Quelana's hair and face. They smiled the saddest smiles Lautrec had ever seen while they looked upon her, then faced each other. Quelaag and The Fair Lady reached across the gap between them and laced hands: two creatures that had been deformed and mutilated and racked with as much pain and suffering as any human had, likely, ever endured; bound together in their final moments in a longing that was as human as anything - that longing desire not to have to face the unknown alone.

The eldest unsheathed a dagger.  
Lautrec, out of respect, looked away.  
After a long time, he looked back. Where their had once been two massive

spider-creatures, only barren circles of tainted snow remained. The eldest had laid Quelana back on the slab of stone. In the blonde witch's hands: a glowing, golden, soul. The soul of a firekeeper.

Lautrec's legs turned to rubber. He reached for a mound of protruding rock beside him and leaned against it to still his nerves. As he watched the eldest close her eyes and begin to pray, he prayed with her, though he doubted they were praying to the same 'God'.

Please, Ana, he thought. If you are truly watching over me from some other plain of existence... guide her back to me. Hold her hand. Keep her safe. I need her. I need her because without her there is nothing. Please.

The eldest joined her hands atop the glowing soul and applied pressure downwards, as if merging Quelana's body with her dead sister's soul. The light pulsed, trembled, and swelled. Lautrec squinted into it: too afraid to look away; too afraid not to. He saw faintly, against a wash of golden light, the eldest's face scrunch up in pain, but she did not waver in her endeavor. A strong flame does not waver, he thought, then: Please, Ana. Help her return to me.

Wind swirled into the chamber from every crack littering the walls, and the light became unbearable to look at. He closed his eyes. He had to. He was blind as well as deaf and in that moment, the only thing that kept him from collapsing was the thought that he might never stand again; and might never hold her again if he did.

And after a long, maddening, moment, the winds died and the light vanished and Lautrec opened his eyes once more.

The eldest was sprawled out on the floor, dead.

Lautrec's eyes moved to the slab of stone and-

-the nothingness that had infested his insides, had turned his thoughts to poison, had made his bones brittle and his will weak, and had seemed as if it would never leave him again, did in fact leave him then; it left him in one, great, hopeful, sweep.

Because Quelana was alive. 


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 60

Standing atop the jut of rock that loomed out over the dark twist of narrow paths and caverns that spiraled down in an endless descent of blackness and cold, Ben felt like a God. He could not keep the smile from his face as he watched his Darkwraiths descend deeper and deeper within the Catacombs; their black swords at the ready, their black eyes peering out of skull masks that were set intently on the mission he'd given them. He watched a half-dozen march behind a cluttered row of stone pillars- like the bars of a cell-slip further down the hole. A moment later he glimpsed three more across from the first six, moving in a tight line across a stone walkway. Another four emerged from a cavernous indentation in the catacombs' wall and climbed down the rungs of a ladder poking up from a cliffside's edge. Three more hopped down from a raised platform and were soldiering forth into the darkness that awaited them the moment their black boots touched ground. They all moved with the same obedient, disciplined, manner, and they allhad the same destination: the Tomb of the Giants. Their mission within: the collection of Gravelord Nito's soul.

Ben stuck his arm out so that his gloved hand hovered over the pit. He moved his fingers about slowly and deliberately, trying to match the movements of his pets. For they are but extensions of my hand, he thought. And I wield them as a fist to crush my foes.

Soon enough, the catacombs were emptied, and-Ben knew-the Tomb of the Giants below had been filled up with the death that was waiting to fall upon 'death' himself. Nito's soul would be his shortly, and when it was, he'd have two of the soul shards needed to open the path to the Kiln... and to his Lordship.

"Pharis," he called over his shoulder. "Come to me."

A moment later, as obedient and subserviently as his Darkwraiths, the woman's hand was slipping into his own and she was at his side.

Ben faced her. "It's beautiful isn't it?"

Pharis leaned out a bit to peer into the pit, but whatever she'd seen was enough to send her reeling back at once.

Ben chuckled. "Afraid of heights, are you?"

"There's nothin' pretty about a big hole in the earth," she answered, her cheeks flushing with chagrin.

"You're afraid," he repeated, laughing a bit louder. He released her hand and took a step nearer to the rock's edge. His boot landed atop a smattering of pebbles, and he purposely sent them sailing over the edge

with a kick, feigning as if he'd lost his balance and pinwheeling his arms dramatically.

"Ben!" Pharis shouted at once and grabbed for his arm.

His laughter came so hard he nearly did slip. Pharis' look of concern faded fast, an expression of indignation rising up in its place. She slapped at his arm. "That's not funny."

"Sure it is." He turned his back to the edge and let his arms lift to his sides. He took a blind step backwards holding a grin on Pharis, whose eyes widened at once.

"Ben, stop!"

He took another step, and at once he knew if he rested his heel back, there would be nothing there to greet it but a thousand-foot plummet into the darkness. His smirk rose and he pulled a deep breath of the stale, cold, air that was the catacombs' wonderfully deadatmosphere.

Pharis shook her head reproachfully. "Are you mad?"

"I'm a God," he told her nonchalantly, closed his eyes, and leaned back till he could feel the plunge wanting to take hold of him. "You know," he began, eyes still shut, "you could very easily give me a shove right now and send me to my death... if you think I can die, that is."

"Any man can die." She said, the urgency and trepidation in her voice making it shaky and small like a child's. Ben liked that.

"I am no man, Pharis. I told you that." He leaned back further. "And I've decided to test my mortality. Goodbye for now." He made as if he were going to throw himself back all the way and-

-Pharis snatched him by the hem of his jerkin and pulled him from the cliff at once. Ben stumbled into her arms laughing so hard he had to double over to keep a painful stitch from his side. Pharis slapped at his back and said, "Ben! Why do you do these things to me?"

He straightened, swiping a tear from the corner of his eye. "Because it's fun."

Pharis sighed. She held his eyes a moment before saying, "What cruel Gods gave my heart to you?"

"There are no Gods," Ben told her at once. "Only me... and you." He grabbed at her waist, pulled her into his body, kissed her lips. They were warm and soft and he felt her tense posture melt away at once in his arms as he sucked at her bottom lip and ran his hand through her hair.

When their lips parted, Pharis said softly, "No Gods... I thought you were a

God?"

He considered it. "If I'm a God... let my wish come true." He closed his eyes, waited, opened them. "Ah, you see. I'm not quite a God yet. Your clothes are still on."

Pharis rolled her eyes and made to kiss him again.

The catacombs trembled; a deep, penetrating, rumble that shook rocks and dirt free from the cave walls and rattled the pebbles beside their boots. It rose a quick crescendo, lingered, and trailed off. Pharis had frozen, her eyes narrowed in concentration. Ben mused that if she were a dog, her ears would be standing up. The image made him laugh again. The 'tremors' or whatever they were didn't bother him. In fact, he'd grown quite accustomed to the things over the last few days. They'd started happening underground as the weather took a turn for the worse above. On the day they'd started, Ben had asked Griggs what he thought of them, and Griggs had replied, "It is Lordran shaking in fear, my Chosen. Fear of what's coming. It knows its Dark Lord stands at its doorstep." Ben had liked that, and so, in turn, he grew to like the tremors as well.

"I hate them things," Pharis spoke into the silence left in the rumblings' wake.

"They'll be over soon enough."

She nodded, squeezed his arm, and turned to the wall at their side. "I'd like to leave this place. What are you going to do with him?"

Ben followed the line of her eyes. There against the rock wall, hanging by his shackled wrists so that his legs and feet dangled beneath him, was the skeletal monstrosity his pets had captured hiding away in the dark bowels of the catacombs. Vamos, he'd said his name was; a blacksmith. Ben grimaced upon glimpsing the writhing thing. He, or it, was a mound of bones and rot and little else. What wonders this world holds, he thought. A shame so many of them are so... hollow.

"What say you, blacksmith?" Ben shouted at the thing. "Did you hear my lady? She wants to know what's to become of you."

Vamos' head hung against the crisscrossing web of bone that was his chest. If he'd heard Ben, it did not show.

Ben's brow furrowed. Unruly little rat. He swung his arm behind him, took hold of the Pharis' black bow (though, he supposed it was his bow then) and shouldered the weapon. He slid an arrow from his quiver, nocked, aimed, and said, "Answer me or answer to my bow. If you bend your knee and swear your allegiance to me... you may yet live."

The blacksmith's skull lifted a bit. The gaping pits of his eyes fixed on Ben. He said nothing.

Ben nodded. "So be it. Let us see if a creature as disgusting as yourself feels pain." He took aim at the skeleton's kneecap and loosed. The arrow sailed the short gap between them and it's head cracked the smith's kneecap in halves when it found the center. Vamos' skull threw back against the wall and the creature wailed in agony. Ben smirked. "I'll ask again: will you swear your allegiance to-"

"NO!" The smith shouted. His voice was an odd, distorted, thing that was sharp against the ears.

"Ah, so you can hear me?" Ben taunted.

Vamos' breath came in jagged pulls. Ben imagined if the thing had a few more facial features, it might've been staring at him with contempt. "Little bastard boy... you'll get what's coming to you."

Boy. Ben grit his teeth, nocked another arrow, and sent it into the smith's other kneecap.

Vamos screeched again and writhed in the shackles keeping him suspended. His legs dangled funnily beneath him with two arrows splitting the upper halves from the lower ones, and Ben thought he did not look entirely dissimilar from a child's doll.

"Let's see how many of those bones of yours I can crack before your soul leaves your body," Ben said, reaching for another arrow.

"Ben..." Pharis' called softly to him.

When he turned on her, he found a sympathetic look imploring from her pale-blue eyes. He sighed. "My lady calls for mercy," he began, turning back on the husk of bones chained to the wall. "She's far kinder than I. Thank her for it, you foul creature."

Vamos turned his eye sockets on Pharis. "Your bitch will get her's too."

Ben did not hesitate: he sent the arrow right between the thing's eyes. It splintered the smith's skull right down the middle, a web of cracks blossoming out around the impact. Vamos tensed, gasped, and went limp. A moment later, whatever ancient sorcery was keeping him together failed, and all at once, every one of his bones came detached. They crumpled to the ground, free from the shackles, and mounded into a pile of death.

"That's two unruly blacksmiths I've had to put downnow," Ben said, turning to Pharis. "And you think I should be more merciful? You saw how unruly that rat was to me! He didn't respect me! He didn't fear me like he should. I'm his Lord! ...and until this world understands that, women, I cannot be merciful. Not till I have their respect."

Pharis laid her hand atop his, gently guiding it to his side and removing

the bow from between them. "I respect you," she whispered, kissing at his bottom lip.

He held her eyes, his fingers twirling at a rogue strand of her fire-kissed hair. "And do you fear me as well?"

She lowered her head but lifted her eyes in that subservient way she knew he liked and said, "Oh, yes, my Dark Lord. You terrify me."

And as simply as that, Ben at once desired to be out of the catacombs and in... another place. He took her by the arm, cast one last glance at the pile of lifeless bones that had been the unruly rat-of-a-blacksmith, and started in on the long ascent back to the graveyard.

The journey back was brief and uneventful (the catacombs had been near deserted when Ben and his army had come upon them, and his pets made quick work of any stragglers that had somehow survived Lordran's Great Cold) and when he and Pharis breached the line of light together, hand- in-hand, which signaled the start of the graveyard, he saw a figure waiting for him; silhouetted against the sprawl of grey and black sky that had become an ever-present fixture watching over them. The sun had not shined in over four days.

As they neared, Ben saw it was Griggs, and the sorcerer was waiting patiently for them, rubbing at his throat. For once, he was not wearing his patented and bizarre smile. Instead, a look of consternation wrinkled his brow and made him look far older than he'd seemed since Ben had first met him.

"Griggs," Ben greeted, pulling Pharis' arm a bit tighter to his body.

"My Chosen," Griggs replied with a reverent bow of his head. "I fear I am the bearer of bad news on this day."

"Oh?"

Griggs' bore his queer, pale, eyes into Ben's own, and Ben swore he saw something he had never seen before housed within as the man spoke. He saw anger. "She's gotten away."

Abby. He knew at once. "How!?" Ben snapped, slipping his arm from Pharis and taking hold of Griggs' at once. "When!?"

"It must've happened last night, My Chosen," Griggs went on calmly enough, but that anger was still bubbling beneath the surface of his face. "I made the rounds of camp this morning and made two startling discoveries. Abby was gone. And so was your Hyena."

"Patches!?" Ben ran a hand through his hair. "No... no, this is... this can't be! I-"

"And yet it is," Griggs interjected. "I assure you, my Chosen. They are both missing. I warned you about the Hyena's loyalty." He rubbed at his throat. Between his longer, slender, fingers, Ben saw a line of scabbed over flesh.

"What happened to your throat?"

"Oh, it is a matter you need not concern yourself with, my Chosen."

Ben had barely heard him. His thoughts were already returned to Patches. Unruly little rat, he thought, curling his hands into fists so hard they hurt. Unruly, bald, ugly, little rat! "I should've listened to you... Gods damn that craven bastard!" He slammed his elbow into the soft fall of dirt and grass sloping around the catacombs' entrance, sending a clump loose to sail from the cliffside. "I'll have his damned bald head!"

"You will," Griggs agreed.

Abby's face flashed before his mind's eye. It was smiling that sickening little smile of hers. "We have to get her back!" Ben shouted. "I want her on her knees, watching when I become Lordran's Dark Lord. I want her to watch and know in her pathetic little heart that I'm better than she is!"

Griggs raised a hand placatingly. "We are in agreement, my Chosen, but while you were gone, I could not send your remaining Darkwraiths after the girl and her little Hyena. I have no control over them. Only you do... my Chosen."

Ben ran a hand against the scruff growing from his chin. "Someone must have seen something. They couldn't have just... walked out of here unspotted! There's more than two-dozen men, women, and children left to us! Someone saw something!"

"Perhaps, my Chosen."

"Piss on 'perhaps'!" Ben snapped, yanking Pharis' arm till she was at his side again. "They know something. I'll have their damned tongues out if they won't give me information!" He was ready to go on shouting, but when his gaze fell back to Griggs, he saw the sorcerer's eyes were not held on his own, but on Pharis. Ben frowned, looking between the two of them. "What in Izalith are you staring at, Griggs!?"

Griggs blinked. "Staring? Oh, I'm sorry, my Chosen. I didn't realize."

"It's alright, Ben," Pharis said.

"Unruly rat!" Ben hissed, his rage already directed back at Patches. "Come on!" He pulled at Pharis' arm and shouldered past Griggs to begin the climb that carried around the cliffside and back up to the graveyard. "I can't believe this."

"I did warn you," Griggs said quietly as they passed. "You didn't listen. And

now you've lost her."

Ben halted so suddenly, Pharis collided with his shoulder. He turned slowly back on Griggs, fixing the man with a look of incredulous fury. "What did you just say to me?"

Griggs smiled. "My apologies, Chosen. I... temporarily forgot my place."

"Yes, you did," Ben growled. "Don't let it happen again or it'll be your tongue I rip out with my bare hands. Come, Pharis."

He gathered them in the muddy clearing that was the cemetery's main grounds. Old and injured men-the only kind who hadn't lost their lives either at the battle of the Archives or long before-, women whose skirts had started to hang loose around their hips without proper food since the church burned to the ground and Andre's stews had burned with it, and children; dirty-faced little critters, their unkempt hair damp with rain. Ben had made sure to line them before the cliffside looming over the steep drop to New Londo below. He wanted them to know their lives were on a similar edge, and should they upset him... might take a spill.

"Where is she," he growled into the crowd, sweeping his gaze across each of their staring, rat-like, faces. "Huh? You heard me. Abby. You all loved her. And now she's gone. And I want to know where she's gone to, and I want to know now."

Rain played its monotonous melody against the muddy pools that littered the cemetery, otherwise: silence. An old man scratched at his chest. A woman sighed impatiently. Another stared indifferently at her own feet.

Ben gloves squeaked as he tightened his fists. They don't respect me, he thought. So I will make them. He pulled his black bow around and set an arrow against the taught string. "Alright. No one wants to talk? So be it." He shouldered the weapon and swept the tip across their ranks. "Every hour she's gone, I'll put an arrow in one of your bellies and watch you bleed to death. Is that what you want?"

A woman gasped. A pair of children were quick to scurry behind her dress and hide. A man shook his head with what might have been disgust. Ben took aim at him.

"Ben, wait," Pharis said, laying her hand on his elbow.

His eyes moved to hers. "Chosen," he corrected at once. Alone, he didn't give a damn what she called him, but in front of the rats, he needed his title. It was what separated him from them.

"Chosen, yes, of course. My apologies. My Chosen... it is possible they didn't see anything. What if Patches sprung Abby from her grave late last night while we all slept. Surely it does seem like the most opportune time, doesn't it?"

Ben thought on that day's morning. He'd woken, shared some time with Pharis beneath the blankets in their tent, and had set out for the catacombs at once. He hadn't seen Patches, and hadn't checked on Abby. Pharis' claim may have held truth in it. He faced the line of rats again, despising the way their beady eyes bore into him. They hated him. He knew that. Hated him for what he did and who he was and what he'd become. For a moment, he considered setting the Darkwraiths on the lot of the filthy things and being done with them. But a Lord needed subjects, and after a moment's consideration, he lowered the bow.

"Piss off, the lot of you," he told them. "Go on. Get out of my sight before I change my mind."

Slowly, the crowd dispersed and went back to doing whatever trivial thing rats did, and Ben was left feeling wholly unsatisfied. He paced in the muds for a moment, clenching and unclenching his fists, sweeping his eyes across New Londo and Blighttown below and what bits he could see of the Undead Burg and its ramparts. Where did you go, he thought. Where are you hiding you filthy rats. Patches... oh, Patches the things I'm going to do to you.

Pharis' voice: "Are you alright?" He spun on her. "No."  
"Do you want to be alone?"

"I want Patches' head on a pike. And I want Abby back in that mud-hole in the ground. Can you give me those things?" He stepped forth and grabbed her wrist. "Can you?"

Her eyes moved from his to his hand and back. She winced. "Ben, you're hurting me."

He looked at the hand wrapped around her wrist and let go at once. He pulled a breath. "I... I didn't mean to."

Thunder boomed in the East and a fresh torrent of rain came beating down upon the cemetery. Ben shielded his eyes and looked out to the ocean at their flank. The waters were dark and swirling unnaturally. The sky above had taken on an ominous, purple, tint; like a face squeezed at the neck and deprived of air. Winds rushed forth and whipped so hard at the lands, Ben swore he saw one of the old stone pillars that cluttered the Firelink Shrine recoil. His damp hair lashed into his eyes and he turned wincing from the winds and the rains, took Pharis' hand-careful not to hurt her again-and led her away from the grounds and towards their tent.

When they were inside, the chaotic symphony of the storm dulling within the heavy layers of blanket and tarp they'd pitched as 'walls', Ben took the red-headed woman in his arms at once and kissed at her lips. When he closed his eyes, though, it was not Pharis who his mind saw before him,

but Abby, and the image repulsed him. He pulled away from her at once, and began stalking the small clearing between their bed and the tent's entrance. Unruly little rats. Don't respect. Don't fear. Helped her. Rats. Rats. RATS.

Pharis had seated herself on the edge of the bed and was watching him pace with a stupid look on her stupid face that he wanted dearly to smack free. No, a rationale voice cried from the well of anger the rest of him was drowning in, Not her. Her and Griggs are all that remain to you now. The only friends you have. Friends (rats) are necessary.

"...do you still wish for my clothes to come off?" Pharis asked, clearly searching for some way to appease him.

"No." He couldn't even thinkof doing that. If Abby's face replaced hers again... he'd likely kill her.

After a few more moments of watching him pace, Pharis said, "Well, is there anything I can do for you, Ben? I don't like seeing you upset."

He halted, set his hands on his hips, and stared at her. He considered it, and after a moment, crossed to her. At the edge of the bedding, he removed his gloves, boots, and jerking. Pharis moved to rise and meet him, but his hands fell on her shoulders and shoved her back down. Before she could move, he crawled over her, pinning her between the bedding and his body. Her eyes swept his, fell to half-mast, and she bit at her lip.

Ben slid his hand up her stomach, her chest, and closed it, gently, around her throat.

Pharis swallowed, a flash of apprehension darkening that lusty look he'd stirred up in her.

"What's your name," he asked.

"My... name?"

"That's right. I was thinking about it the other day. When we first met atop Sen's Fortress, you told Laturec your name and he'd said you were lying. Said 'Pharis' was a legendary archer from another era, and that you were simply an imposter." He tightened his hand ever-so-slightly around her neck. "Well... is that true?"

"Ben..."  
"Is it true?"  
She swallowed, stared, nodded. "It's true." "Then tell me your real name."

She stared at him, and just when it seemed as if she were going to refuse him an answer, she croaked, "...Mary. My name's Mary."

"Mary..." He echoed, letting his fingers rub at the side of her throat. "Why change it? Why lie all this time?"

She shrugged. "'Cuz 'Mary' was the name my parents gave me. My died when I was very young. Figured I'd take the opportunity to give myself my own name."

"Mary, Mary, Mary..." He grinned, loosed his hand from her throat, and laid it on her belly to lower himself to her and kiss at her brow. "It's pretty."

He collapsed to the bedding beside her and draped his arms around her, pulling her tight against his body. He kissed her neck, her ear, her cheek. His head fell against the pillow and, in that moment at least, all his angers and fears melted away as he closed his eyes. Pharis' body was warm against his, and he was thankful for that. It had been so very cold for so very long. He squeezed her. "Mary..."

"Is that what you're going to start calling me now?"

He laughed. "Yes. If you'd like."

"And if I don't? ...Ben? Are you still awake?" He squeezed tighter, but had grown too tired to answer, and after a long moment of quiet, she whispered, "...I think I love you, Benjamin."

Her words were growing small, like pebbles rolling from a cliffside and shrinking away into a dark void. Ben pressed his head to her chest and listened to her breath ebb and flow against his ear. Outside, thunder grumbled, but in their little tent, he had found-for then-peace. He drifted, faded, and slept.

-o-o-o-

He'd fallen asleep to thunder and he'd awoken to thunder. Ben's eyes opened to slits and he stretched his arms to his sides before sitting straight up in their bedding and narrowing his gaze to the world outside their tent flaps. The noon had creeped to dusk, and at dusk, those greying skies grew ten-fold more ominous. He stared at the sliver he could see and a shiver took his spine. He pulled blankets tighter to his body and fought off a yawn with a fist cupped to his mouth. I feel bad, he thought, though he wasn't sure why.

"My Chosen!?" Griggs' voice carried into the tent from outside; an uncharacteristic urgency straining it. "My Chosen!? Are you alright!?"

"I'm in here, Griggs. What is it?"

A moment later, the tent flaps brushed aside and Griggs came swooping in in his fall of crimson robes. His eyes landed on Ben's and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Thank goodness, my Chosen. I heard your shouting. I feared perhaps Patches or Abby returned to... harm you."

"Shouting?" Ben questioned. "Griggs, I don't... I wasn't shouting. I just woke up."

"Oh...?" Griggs brought his long fingers to his mouth and danced them across his bottom lip. "Mmm. Perhaps you were having a nightmare then? I most certainly heard you shouting, my Chosen."

Ben considered it. "Well, I... I don't recall a nightmare, but... if you're sure it was my voice you heard, I suppose I must've been. I just don't-" His words cut abruptly when he looked to Griggs and saw the mouth-gaped expression of sorrow on the sorcerer's face. But Griggs was not looking at Ben, he was looking to Ben's side. He was looking at-

-Ben snapped his head around.

Beside him, her mouth twisted open queerly, her neck bent at an odd angle, her eyes staring emptily up at the tent's roof, Pharis lie dead.

"No..." Ben muttered, shifting around to scoop her head into his hands at once. "Pharis! Pharis - get up!" Her arms and head swung limply in his hands. Her eyes and tongue rolled around about without protest as he shook her. "No! NO! GET UP!" He shook her so hard, her head snapped back against her shoulders. "No..." He laid his head against her chest, waiting to hear the ebb and flow of her breathing. None came. "Gods, no!"

"Oh, my Chosen," Griggs' voice came softly behind him, and Ben felt the man's hand land upon his shoulder and squeeze. "I'm so sorry."

"How did this happen!?" Ben shouted, hating how shaky, how weak, his voice sounded. When he looked at Pharis again, she was blurry, and all he could think was: Her name is Mary. Her name is Mary. Her name is Mary.

"Chosen, look there on her arm."

Ben did. There amidst the canvas of fair skin that was her pretty flesh was a black and blue mark spreading into five distinct lines; as if a hand had tightened around it and squeezed. He frowned, swiped a tear from his eye, shook his head. "I don't understand."

"Chosen, I think what's happened here is clear," Griggs went on. "...you killed her."

"No," Ben said at once. "I wouldn't... I only have you and her, I wouldn't-"

"I heard you shouting, my Chosen. You must have had a nightmare that awoke a great anger in you. In your sleep, you must've taken hold of her

and your 'gift'... Chosen, you must have put your gift of death into her by accident."

Ben held his hands before him and stared. They were shaking: bare and shaking. His eyes floated back to Pharis. Her name is Mary. "But... there's no blood on her face. They all bled from the nose. They... I couldn't have done this, Griggs. I swear I wouldn't do it! I swear!"

"Chosen," Griggs cooed, seating himself on the bed. His arms snaked around Ben's shoulders and squeezed. "It was an accident. That's all."

"I didn't..." Did you? "I wouldn't..." Would you? Ben grabbed fistfuls of his hair and shook his head. Her name is Mary. "Gods... what have I done, Griggs?"

Griggs pulled Ben into his body and the folds of his robe covered him at once. The sorcerer stroked at his hair and shushed him. "Chosen, it is not your fault. Accidents happen."

"She told me she loved me." His vision blurred so heavily, Ben had to squeeze his eyes shut.

"How sweet," Griggs said. "And tragic. Mmm. Yes. Tragic, of course. You need time to grieve, my Chosen, for the heart must heal before it can beat to its fullest once again. I will leave you so that you can be with Pharis."

"Her name is Mary," he croaked.

"As you say, my Chosen." Griggs stroked at his hair again, and for a while, the two sat like that in silence; the occasional clasp of thunder and the persistent rain trickling against the tent roof the only sounds to fill the quiet. Then Griggs said, "These are troubling times, Chosen. For all of us. You've lost someone dear to you. And, my Lord, you haven't sent the Darkwraiths out to capture Abby and Patches again yet. You also neglected to call them back from the catacombs. You... understandably, are ignoring some very... pressing matters, Chosen."

"Oh, yes," Ben croaked. He could not pry his eyes from Pharis (Mary) as he spoke. "I'm sorry. I just... I'm not feeling-"

"Oh, you don't have to explain yourself to me, Chosen. Never, ever, ever. I'm only telling you because I fear our enemies will be soon to move on us?"

"Enemies?"

"Mmm. Yes. That heretic knight, Solaire, and his group. I saw his coming in the storm, my Chosen. He means to murder you, me, and every last one of your subjects outside."

"Murder?" Ben echoed incredulously. He'd never thought the Knight

Solaire would do such a thing. He'd always seemed such a just man.

"Mmm. I'm afraid so. He is driven by jealousy, Chosen. He wants the Lordship that awaits you. And he'll do anything he can to acquire it."

Unruly rat, Ben thought, the anger swelling in him and making him temporarily forget the dead woman who'd been the only woman to tell him she loved him lying next to him. When his eyes found her again, though, the anger fled, and the sorrow returned. He reached for her hair- fire-kissed-and stroked at it.

"My Chosen?" Griggs called softly. Ben turned to him and the man smiled. "There is something you must understand about your Darkwraiths. As their Dark Lord, they will devoutly follow any command you give them." Griggs' hand tightened on his shoulder, and the smile grew a bit wider, but a bit queerer too. "Even if your 'command' was to have them follow another's command."

Ben frowned. "What do you mean?"

Griggs' smile turned lopsided. "Well, my Chosen, you have not been... in a sound mind as of late. And now with your poor, poor, woman there dead, you'll need time to grieve and time to heal and time to rise back to the Lord you were born to be. ...but in the meantime? ...perhaps I should have control of the Darkwraiths. Only, of course, until you're ready to rise and rule once more, in which I would happily and humbly return them to you... my Chosen" He bowed subserviently.

"They would do that?" Ben asked. "They would have another Lord just like that?"

"Well, not a 'Lord', of course," Griggs went on. "But they will obey me, my Chosen, and I will use them not only to stop Solaire and his band of murdering heretics from acting against us, and not only to ensure the Lord Soul shard from Nito, but also to recapture our missing Hyena and the false prophet he helped escape. I will do these things at once. ...should you turn the Darkwraiths over to me."

Ben laced his fingers in between Pharis'. They were so cold. So lifeless. He sniffled. "I don't know, Griggs..."

"I understand, Chosen." Griggs stood. "It's only... well, I'd hate to see you lose your Lordship by a band of heretics when you're so close to achieving it. You're so close to getting all the respect and fear you deserve. And they want to steal it from you. I'd protect that Lordship with everything I have, Chosen, but if you think you can do better..." Griggs' eyes moved to Pharis and his brow upturned sympathetically. "Oh, dear. I remember a conversation I had with the girl not long ago. She told me after growing up an orphan, she'd thought she finally found a place she felt safe." He faced Ben. "In your arm, my Chosen."

Ben's breath came shaking in his chest. Her name is Mary. He pressed his cheek against hers and let his tears fall to her lifeless face. In his peripheral, he saw Griggs moving for the tent flaps. How can I lead right now? He thought. How can I possibly command an army when I'm weeping like a child! "Griggs, wait."

The sorcerer did.

Ben nodded. "Alright. I'll give you command. I... I need to be alone with her for awhile, I..."

"Say no more, my Chosen. I understand entirely." Griggs peeked out into the storm. "But if you mean to have me set about protecting your subjects and your lordship, you'd best act quick. Who knows how close the heretics are. They could be just outside our camp at this very moment. ...waiting to steal your due respect from you. Like rats."

Unruly rats. Ben swiped at his eyes, rose, and joined beside Griggs. He glanced once more at Mary, but the sight of her made his chest feel like it was on the verge of collapse, and so he quickly averted his eyes and stepped into the storm with Griggs' robed arm upon his shoulders.

His Darkwraith were already waiting for him. They were lined in the cemetery in a row; black soldiers with black swords and black eyes staring endlessly out of skulled heads. There were a lot of them, and even more were coming up from the catacombs. In the hands of one near the end of the pack, was the glowing Lord Soul shard of Nito. The two groups converged and when Ben raised his hand, they all fell to their knees at once, heads bowed. The rain smattered against their hoods and shoulder mantles, otherwise: silence.

"Hear me now, my knights," Ben spoke, trying to put strength in his voice, but knowing he was failing. "I am going to be indisposed for... a while. You now take your commands from this man," he patted Griggs on the shoulder, "as devoutly and loyally as you took command from me. Griggs is your ruler now. You do as he says without question or hesitancy. Do you understand?"

The Darkwraiths' reply was more silence. Slowly, though, one-by-one their heads turned slightly to the side; their cavernous eye-holes moving from Ben to Griggs. They bowed their head reverently once more, but it was no longer in worship of Ben: it was in worship of Griggs.

Thunder cracked the blackening skies, and a moment later a bolt of lightning split a seam that looked yellow... but blue in a way, as well.

Griggs' smile was at it queerest and most unsettling when Ben faced the sorcerer. Ben nodded. "Serve me well, Griggs, and bring me the heads of those treacherous heretics who seek to rob my Lordship. You have been a good friend to me, and now... now you're my only friend." Her name was

Mary.  
Ben turned to leave-

-and Griggs' grip tightened on his arm, halting him so suddenly, his boot slipped in the mud. He spun back on the sorcerer frowning.

Griggs stared at him.

I feel bad, Ben thought, but he could not tell why.

Griggs thumped his walking staff against the ground. The tip swelled with the mists of magic. Ben narrowed his eyes upon it and had just enough to think, It's pretty, before the attack rocketed forth and buried into his belly.

He sailed back, his arms flailing uselessly out to his sides, and landed a moment later sliding in the muds. The wind left his body entirely, but he was wracked with so much pain in that moment he didn't even notice until he tried pulling a breath and only a ragged gasp came instead. He winced, squeezed his eyes, shut and coughed. The act seemed to unclog his pipes, and at once he was sucking in desperate pulls of air, though every one reawakened the pain Griggs' attack had left him in.

Before he had time to even process what was happening, two of his Darkwraiths were hovering over him. Ben reached for them for aid. They took his hand. They got him up. Then they dragged him between them. Ben coughed and gagged again and his soaked hair fell across his vision like a wet blanket. He kicked his feet, but the wraiths had him up high enough in their grip that only the toes of his boots could skim the mud. He shook hair loose and saw their destination.

"NO!" Ben wailed, but by then - it was too late.

They hurled him down into Abby's grave. Ben landed amidst the rocks and the mud, and his leg caught at an unnatural angle. He felt something snap and he screamed. When he clawed his fingers into the mud and twisted halfway around to glimpse the damage, there was a bone- strikingly white against the dark leathers of his breeches-poking out from his shin. He wailed again and slapped his head back against the mud in agony.

What's happening, a voice pleaded that perhaps was his own or perhaps was the voice of madness screeching in his ear. What's happening!? Mary? HER NAME IS MARY!

Thunder boomed, lightning flashed, and Griggs appeared; standing at the rim of the grave and peering down into it with that queer smile of his.

Ben's eyes found him, but the pain he was in did not allow him to focus for long. "Griggs! Griggs help me! They turned on me! GRIGGS HELP!"

Instead of helping, Griggs turned to receive something from a Darkwraith at his side. Ben squinted through the agony and the clumps of wet hair to try and make it out, and thought it might've been a pot or kettle of some sort. Help you? the mad voice echoed, laughing at him. You fool. It wasn't the wraiths that turned on you. It was him. Not Griggs. Logan, you fool. Logan. Her name is Mary, but his is Logan.

"LOGAN!" Ben wailed, but his words were drowned immediately with whatever the contents in Logan's kettle were. It was a heavy, thick, liquid that was bitter on his tongue and stung at his eyes and enflamed his nostrils and-

-Gods no, Ben thought. He knew the smell. It was the enchanted oil Logan had conjured to burn the serpents. And now it was covering him. "Logan! No! PLEASE!"

"Before I strangled her," Logan said. "She called your name. She must have... truly loved you."

"LOGAN!"

"Mary... how pretty." Soft laughter rumbled beneath his wide-brimmed hat.

Where did that hat come from!?

"While you're burning down there, boy, you should pray as well," Logan went on. "For I only need one Chosen to walk out of the Kiln after Gwyn is dealt with. And if I find Abby, who you so foolishly let slip through our fingers, it will be her, and your use will have dried up. For now... this is your punishment for letting my Dark Queen get away." He took a lit torch from the hands of a Darkwraith at his side.

"NOOO! LOGAN! PLEASE!"

Logan ignored his screams. The sorcerer swept a long, pointed, finger across the cemetery. "Kill all of them. They have no use any longer."

Kill them? the mad voice questioned. Kill my subjects!? His question was answered a moment later when he heard the screams begin. First a man's, then a woman's, then... a child's. He's slaughtering my subjects. HE'S SLAUGHTERING THEM!

"THEY'RE MINE! LOGAN! I AM THEIR LORD! YOU CAN'T-"

Logan tossed the torch into the pit.

Flames wrapped Ben's body in a pillar of agony and heat and suffering and Ben screamed and screamed and felt his skin melting from his bones and his hair leaving his head and his sanity fleeing from his mind and he screamed and he screamed and he screamed some more and the fires

burned and so did he and her name was Mary and his name was Logan and fires burned and pain and suffering swirled and death closed on him.

...and they did not put him out for quite some time.

Chapter 61

Domhnall's home was a reflection of the man himself. It was neat, cozy, and inviting, and despite the great cold that had gripped Lordran in its icy fingers for so long, the place still felt warm. Looking upon it then, standing in the very room the merchant had once called 'home', Abby was overwhelmed with as much sadness as she'd felt the day he died, and found herself leaning against his kitchen table to wait out the sorrow before it collapsed her. Her eyes swept the kitchen, the pantry, and the smaller room off to the side where Domhnall had given her a blanket so long ago to stave off the cold when Lautrec had led her, Quelana, Ben, and Patches to the merchant's residence. The place hadn't changed much in truth, and-somehow-that was sadder than anything. Domhnall's gone, Abby thought, clutching at her chest. But his home still lives on unaware.

"Bloody fool," Patches' muttering drew her attention to the balcony, and the moment her eyes fell upon it, she could see Quelana and herself lying side-by-side peering down into the Burg's streets for their first glimpse of the demonic 'dogs' that had seemed to materialize from the shadows. Patches, if he remembered at all, did not seem to share her nostalgia. He was pacing in the remnants of snow that still caked the wooden flooring of the balcony, running his hand repeatedly against the smooth curvature of his bald head. "Fool, fool, fool!"

Abby crossed the kitchen to join him, and when he came stomping past her, she laid a hand on his elbow that was meant to comfort him, but instead only wound up making him jump.

"You don't touch me, girl!" He hissed, and in the sliver of moonlight that poked through the storm clouds overhead, she could see apprehension lining every inch of his face. "This is your bloody fault! Gods, we're going to die." He paused, seemed to consider his words, and whined. "I'm going to die! Oh, Gods damn you, girl! Why did I ever let you talk me into this! You fool, Patches! Fool, fool, fool!"

"We're not going to die," Abby assured him, and perhaps because Patches was so wound up and the two of them needed someone to be level- headed, just like that she felt her sorrow for Domhnall pass, and a calmness came over her instead. "Do you hear me? You did a very brave and smart thing rescuing me, Patches. You're not going to die."

"You didn't see what I saw, girl, don't go talkin' like you did!" He snapped, turning back to the dark streets below and keeping a wary eye (or at least attempting to) on every shadow, alley, and road he could. "That Griggs fella ain't human. I slit the bastards throat and you plugged his back up enough times with that dagger to turn his body into mush. But it didn't work! Gods, when he came crawling after you..." Patches words trailed and an empty look blanketed his face.

"I told you," Abby spoke into the gap of silence," he's not 'Griggs'. He's the sorcerer Logan."

"I don't bloody care what he calls himself! He ain't human! That thing that came crawling after you in the cemetery grave... the blood leaking from its slit throat-the throat I damned well slit myself-it wasn't red like a man's. It was black... like a... like a damned demon's or something! Gods, we're going to die."

"He may not always look like one, but I promise you, Patches, he is a man. And like any man he can die. I just have to... figure out how."

"It ain't him I'm even worried about," Patches went on, "It's the damned Darkwraiths. You think Ben's not going to send them after us? And we were damned stupid enough to waste a whole day heading for that precious, bloody, church of yours and there was nothing there but a burnt down husk-of-a-building and a few rotting corpses!"

On that account he had the right of it. Abby was so sure they'd find Solaire and the others waiting for them there, but there had been nothing. And without shelter from the relentless rains overhead, she could only think of one other place to turn to. Domhnall's was close to the Firelink Shrine, sure, but perhaps, she thought, that would actually benefit them. After all, who'd be mad enough to hide just outside their enemies gates?

"Solaire still yet lives, Patches," Abby insisted. "Just because they haven't returned from their mission yet doesn't mean anything. We'll try the church again on the morrow."

"Piss on the morrow! Oh, you bloody mad-girl. You did this to us. You condemned us to a death skewered on a Darkwraith's blade! And that's if we're lucky! If not... they'll use that 'soul-stealing' aura that comes up out of their hands." Patches grimaced. "Oh, damn me for listening to you."

"Patches-"

"Piss off already! This is your fault! I don't want to hear it! You damned us both to-"

Abby was out of options, and what she wanted to do would only benefit the both of them, so she did it. She grabbed for his hand and cupped it in her own. Before he could yank it away, she closed her eyes, channeled her 'gift', and reached for his fear. Fear, as it turned out, was a very different beast than anger. Anger was like a caged monster clawing up out of the depths of a man's heart. Patches' fears and anxiety more resembled a weeping child, huddled up and hiding deep within his chest. Abby found the fear-child, extended her hand, and embraced the little thing.

Patches' eyelids at once fell to half-mast. His mouth came slightly agape and the stress that had been wrinkling his features melted away. He blinked twice, swayed, smiled, and just like that: his worries were over.

"Now just come sit down," Abby said, leading him back inside and guiding him before one of Domhnall's kitchen chairs. Patches plopped down without protest, and Abby released his hand to stroke his cheek. "Sit there and be quiet and stop worrying, alright Patches?"

"Okay," Patches said, his smile turning lopsided as he leaned his face into his knuckles and relaxed.

Abby rubbed at his shoulder for a moment longer to be sure he wasn't going to start shouting again, and when she was satisfied, pulled away from him to search Dom's home for anything they might find useful. Particularly, she was looking for some food and a pair of boots. Her feet were bare, and the journey from the cemetery to the Parish and finally Dom's had left them dirty, cut, and scraped in a dozen places she could only hope wouldn't take on infection. She made a quick round of the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards and cabinets (all empty) before pressing into the next room. Of course there's no food, she thought. Food is Lordran's most precious resource. Domhnall wouldn't have left any behind.

In the smaller room, she halted and looked over the barren boards that made up the floor. She spotted the little corner she had slept in with Quelana at her side, the clearing before the empty hearth that Ben had made his quarters, and the chair leaned up against the far wall where Lautre had kept watch at night. She remembered he'd drifted off once and she heard him mutter something about 'my sister'. If she'd only known then what she'd learned later... Ana is as dead as Dom, she realized. What will you think of that, Lautrec? Will you care? ...will you cry? The image of Lautrec crying was too strange to linger on, and so she set it aside and returned her focus to her search.

There was a large, oak, armoire standing sentinel opposite the hearth. Abby crossed to it and took hold of the brass handles with a stir of hope fluttering her breath. She pulled it open, looked inside, and smiled. There were boots within, but far more as well. Domhnall had been a collector of all sorts of things-armor chief among them-and, accordingly, his armoire was filled to the brim with clothing and leathers he, apparently, did not deem necessary when he made the move to the Parish chapel. Abby waded through them searching for something her size when her eyes fell upon a heavy fall of robes at the tail end of the line. She pulled it loose from the pack and nearly laughed when she surveyed the thing.

They were cleric's robes: the exact same sort of things she'd been wearing in the Undead Asylum when Lautrec had rescued her. Abby was thin when the whole, mad, adventure had started, but now she wasn't much more than skin and bones having been starved twice, and she'd likely drown in the things. Nonetheless, she peeled the dirty rags from her body, gripped the robes' hem, and tugged it over her head; it somehow felt like the 'right' thing to do, and she couldn't come up with a better reason than that. They were, appropriately, far too large for her, but she

left them on anyway as she spied a pair of boots at the armoire's floor. The boots, like the robes, were a bit large for her feet, but tightening the straps, she'd knew they'd hold. She bit at her lip as she swept one last look over the armoire's contents, and just as she was readying to seal up the doors again, she spotted something that gave her pause.

Tucked away behind a small crate on the top shelf, a fabric colored a familiar and strangely vibrant shade of red protruded. Abby had to stand on the tips of her toes to reach it, but when she did, pulling it from its hiding place, she saw it was, in fact, what she'd thought: a pyromancy glove.

Without so much as considering it, she tucked the glove down over her left hand at once. The fabric squeezed at her fingers, and a warmth radiated in her palm, and Abby, at once, thought of how much she'd enjoyed spending the two days she had with Quelana; being taught pyromancy by the mother of pyromancy herself. It made her miss her friend dearly.

And now here I stand, Abby mused. In the same robes I started this adventure with, a glove on my hand again and Patches beside me. She thought of all Logan and Lautrec's talks about 'cycles' and couldn't help wonder if the world was cycling them back around again before the end of... well, the end of whatever was happening to them. What was it Lautrec had told her about cycles? "Cycling..." she muttered as she thought on it.

"Hmm?" Patches enquired from the next room.

Abby lifted her gaze. "Oh... I'm sorry, Patches. I didn't mean to say that out loud."

"Cycling? That what you said?" He, thankfully, still had that placid look on his face as he turned to her. "You know what they say about cycles, girl: they always come back around again. Hee-hee. Cycles. Circles. All the same thing really, ain't it? My mum used to say 'things don't change as much as people think they do. it's the people that change more often than not.'" He was quiet for a moment, then added, "I miss my mum."

Abby entered the kitchen and stood beside him. "Was she kind a woman?" "Oh, yes. Very kind. Very good."  
Abby smiled. "Pretty?"  
He returned the gesture. "The prettiest mum in Lordran."

Having never heard Patches open up about his past, she was about to implore him to continue when the building shook. The tremor came on so sudden and violent, Abby had to throw her arms out to the table to catch herself from falling. The otherwise quiet night came alive as every street

in every turn of the Burg vibrated and rumbled and swayed, and a clutter of pots Dom had stores atop a cabinet shook loose and came spilling out to clatter and clank into a pile on the floor. Patches grabbed for Abby's arm, and together they peered out beyond the balcony, where the building opposite Dom's began lurching on its side. The sight reminded her of the way Lautrec leaned after he'd had too many skins of wine, and it was with that image she held when the whole thing slid sideways, the bottom floor collapsing and exploding in a massive dusting of debris. The building's structure groaned, and the remaining three stories slumped over, slid a bit, but held.

The tremor ended. It's victim: a building that would never stand straight again.

Abby wasn't aware she'd been holding her breath till her lungs hurt and forced her to gasp. As she caught her breath, thunder grumbled outside: a final bit of punctuation, perhaps, in the tremor's aftermath.

Truthfully, it shouldn't have caught her so unaware. The 'tremors' or whatever they were, which had started a week earlier, had been coming more and more frequently and more and more violently in the last few days. She had felt them plenty in the grave Ben had held her captive in, and she'd had plenty of time to wonder what they were and why they were happening, but no answer came that didn't frighten her, so she'd given up on piecing that particular puzzle together.

Patches' expression had not changed in the slightest. He chuckled and folded his arms across his chest. "Big one, huh?"

"Yes," was the only word she could croak. Her eyes returned to that slanted, broken, building that now resided across the street. Above it, a cluster of dark purple clouds were swirling (cycling) unnaturally to the East, and Abby did not need to think on it long before ascertaining their meeting grounds. They're gathering over the Firelink Shrine, she thought. Or, more likely, the Kiln of the First Flame. They're gathering for the same reason the tremors have started. Lordran knows its end is near... and it is afraid.

Lightning split a seam outside, cutting down through the rains and clouds to bite at another building in the Burg; this one a bit further away. The bolt's core was an incandescent line of gold, but its rim was a queer and pale blue that crackled and snapped at the cold night air around it, as if warning Lordran itself to stay away.

The sight of it sent a chill up Abby's spine, and she sat beside Patches at the kitchen table at once, eager to get him talking again and quell the uncomfortable silence left in the thunder's wake. "Patches..."

"Yes?" He answered; still calmed.

"...did your mother ever talk about, well, the 'end times'?"

"End times?" He rubbed his chin. "Sure. S'ppose most people are bound to talk about them bleak things at some point in their lives. My mum believed the Gods would return to Lordran when the end came upon it. Scoop up all the good little boys and girls and leave the nasty ones behind to rot as things went bad." His brow furrowed pensively. "I been quite nasty, I s'ppose. Hope... well, damn, I hope that hasn't already happened." He eyed the queer swirl of clouds outside and swallowed. "Maybe the Gods already came and left. Maybe this is the end times and we've been left to suffer through 'em... just no one's realized it yet."

"I don't believe that," Abby said. She thought of Solaire, of Quelana, of Lady Rhea and Domhnall. There was too much good left in the world for Patches to be right.

"It's a strange place this world of ours," Patches said. He pulled a deep breath that wavered strangely. He ran a hand over his head and cupped his eyes. When it came away, they were rheumy. "...girl?"

"What is it, Patches?" "Are you afraid?" "Of...?"  
"Of the end?"

Abby considered it. She decided to answer truthfully. "Yes."

"...do you think all wicked men like me are damned?"

Her answer was to rise, scoot around the table, and take the seat next to his. She squeezed his hand and said, "You're not a wicked man. And even if you were, there is always time to atone. Help me, Patches. Help me stop Logan and save Lordran from whatever is happening to it."

Patches stared at her, sighed, and tentatively reached for her shoulder. When she nodded her approval, he rested against it and sighed. "Just don't let them hurt Patches," he muttered, closing his eyes. "And Patches will do good."

In less than a minute, the man was snoring atop her shoulder.

Strange place this world of ours, Patches had said, and in that moment, Abby couldn't help but agree with the assessment. She leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and before long, she was sleeping herself.

-o-o-o-

She woke sometime later to the sound of movement in the building, and every muscle in her body tensed so suddenly it hurt. Abby lifted her head

and blinked her vision into focus. Patches was sprawled out on the table beside her, snoring away, the rain still pattering against the balcony's awning outside, and from somewhere below, the distinct sound of armor clinking against itself sounded.

Darkwraith armor.

"Patches!" She whispered in a panic, taking hold of the man's shoulder and shaking him awake.

"Hm?" Patches groaned. He rose from the table yawning and stretching his arms wide to his sides. His eyes landed on hers and narrowed into a glare. "What in Izalith are you doing waking me up for? I was- mmph!"

She'd clamped her hand over his mouth and held a finger to her lips. He frowned and made to grab her wrist when the clinking came again and froze him in place. Abby shushed him, cautiously removed her hand from his mouth, and took him by the elbow. Patches stumbled up beside her, his eyes wide and locked on the doorway leading to the front room; and to the ladder that was now alive with the sound of someone's (something's) ascent.

Abby ushered him as quickly as she could into the side room without stirring up any noise, and when they'd breached the line dividing it from the kitchen, she cast a desperate sweep of her eyes across the shadowed room for aid. They landed on the armoire, caught in a slant of moonlight breaking through the boarded windows at its flank, and without thinking, she pulled Patches towards it and yanked the doors open.

"What are you doing!?" Patches whispered.  
"Shhh!" She pleaded, trying to stuff him inside. "We have to hide!"

"Oh this is bloody madness!" Patches whined, bending his neck to duck into the tight space.

Abby was short enough that she could walk in comfortably, and when she had she yanked the doors closed behind them, careful to slow the pull when they came together so as to not make any noise. Then-

-silence; only the labored breathing of both Patches and herself to fill the quiet. Abby listened, leaning her face nearer to the slit between the closed doors, where she could peek out and glimpse a bit of the dark room beyond. For a moment, nothing stirred and nothing sounded and she began to think (hope) that perhaps they were safe.

Then boards creaked in the next room and she knew at once: they were not.

"Oh, Gods help us..." Patches whispered.

"Shh!" She hissed, clamping down on his arm. She was about to reach for his fears to quell them, but realized if a fight came their way, Patches and his spear were the only things that might be able to keep them alive. Not the only thing, her thoughts reminded her, and she tightened the hand with the pyromancy glove adorned to it to a fist. What good she might be able to do with a weapon she'd hadn't used in over a month, she did not know, but it was something, and in a bleak time of nothing, something counted.

Outside, boards creaked again, closer, and a moment later - it appeared. The shape was without feature in the darkness of night, but the vague outline was enough to give away its owner: a Darkwraith.

All at once, Abby felt the stuffy air inside the armoire chill and grow hard to pull a breath from. Patches must have felt it too, because he began to whimper again until she reached her non-gloved hand to his face and covered his mouth up. She snapped her eye back to the slit of the doors and saw the Darkwraith still standing statuesque in the night; its head cocked on its side. Patches made a sound and she tightened her grip on his mouth. The wraith looked their way. Black eyeholes peered out of a black mask. A sword rose from its hip. It stalked forward.

Oh no. Abby's breath froze in her chest, and for a moment, she could only watch in dread as the thing approached their hiding place. A strong flame does not waver, Quelana's voice whispered into her thoughts, and though she was no living flame like the Mother of Pyromancy, she could certainly try and wield one. No point in silencing him any longer, she released Patches and tried recalling just how to angle her wrist and bend her fingers to call forth flame from the glove.

"What's going on?" Patches whispered. "We have to fight. Get ready."  
"Fight!?"

The wraith's silhouette moved in a strange fashion, and Abby could only stare and wonder what it was doing. Then it stepped into the sliver of moonlight, and she could see the sword it carried was angled towards the armoire, ready to plunge.

She kicked the door open.

The wraith screeched a shrill, terrible, noise and drove its blade on them.

The room came alive in a fiery glow as Abby angled her arm back, focused, and hurled. The fireball closed the short gap fast, encased the black thing's black armor, and sent it reeling back on its heels, swiping madly at the air.

"Come on!" She wailed, grabbing blindly for Patches' hand, finding it, and

yanking him out past the partially-burning wraith. As they passed, it swung for them, but Patches' body crashed into Abby's own and they went tumbling out of the sword's perimeter and back into the kitchen.

Abby scrambled for the front room containing the ladder, hoping Patches was smart enough to stick with her. She rounded the doorway and-

-froze.

A second Darkwraith had its hands wrapped around the top rung. When her new boots came skidding before the monster's face, its head lifted and Abby peered into the endless pits that were the wraith's eyes. The dark tunnels twisted inwards for an eternity, and Abby felt her mind twisting with them. Hands gripped her arms. She barely felt them till they were pulling.

By the time her mind returned to her, Patches had her dragged out to the balcony. The cold air in her lungs focused her vision. She turned it on him immediately. "What do we do?"

Patches had unsheathed his spear, and his knuckles were white around the leather-banded grips in its center. His eyes moved from her, to the building's interior (in her periphery Abby glimpsed dark things coming for them from the shadows), and finally to the end of the balcony. He shuffled forth, forcing Abby to move as well, and by the time she got her head turned around, it was too late to stop what Patches was planning.

The balcony ended in a jagged line of splintered wood that gave way to the adjacent building. The railing there had long since rotted away, and so when Patches shoved, Abby leaped. The drop wasn't much, but she was still malnourished, and when her feet landed on the rain-slicked stone that made up the adjacent building's roof, her legs gave out and she went tumbling into a roll. She made to stop herself but her grasping hands found nothing, and shortly after, she felt the roof disappear beneath her and the fall begin.

Patches hand found her arm just as she began the descent, leaving her legs flailing and kicking about over a three story drop that would most certainly shatter them. She lifted her gaze to the Hyena and thunder boomed, sending a zig-zagging bolt of yellow and blue down behind Patches' shoulder. As he hoisted her into his arms, the rain picked up and a wind came so hard, she thought they both were going to take a spill over the side. They didn't-Patches steadying them by planting his spear into the roof-but a moment later, the Darkwraiths came barreling out of Domhnall's with swords drawn at the ready and they had to start moving again.

Abby clawed damp hair from her vision and whipped her head around, desperate for an escape from the building. "There!" She shouted over the screaming winds, pointing out a sloped section of roof that lowered

enough to allow them safe passage to the street below. The two of them broke into a sprint just as the heavy twin thuds of the wraiths landing at their heels sounded.

Abby and Patches' booted feet landed upon the sloped bit of roof, and at once, the slick stone underfoot sent them both to their asses. Abby grabbed for Patches hand, found it, and braced herself. They went spilling off the edge and onto a raised wooden platform below. Their combined weight first splintered then cracked the wood entirely, and they plummeted down the last story to the hard, cobblestone, street below.

Pain wrung from Abby's hip up to the very top of her head and her vision dimmed momentarily to black. Then Patches was pulling her to her feet and she had no choice but to make them move. They raced on, blindly, into the beating rains and the howling winds of the night: no torches to guide their path; no moon left to aid their travels. Behind them, Abby could hear the wraith's armor clinking and clanking as they bounded along in their trail.

The road curved, sloped upwards, and twisted. Patches took each change of terrain as well as he could, and Abby did her best to follow his footing. She could not breath. She'd spent too much time lying in a hole in the ground and not enough putting food in her belly, and her muscles and lungs were pleading with her to halt. If she halted, though, she knew she was dead, so she ignored the pain and pressed on.

She did not stop pressing on till Patches himself halted and she collided with his back. He spun around and she saw his eyes narrow into the rains at their rear.

"Patches," Abby croaked. "I... can't... breath." The world felt wobbly beneath her feet and she leaned into him to stop the sway.

Thunder roared a warcry overhead. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, her body and legs were scooped up into a ball in Patches' arms and he was barreling up the curving flight of stairs of a tower's inner keep. Abby blinked, shook her head, craned her neck back to see what gave chase in their trail. She saw nothing. "Patches... I can walk."

"Yeah?" He snapped between gasps of breath. "What are you... going to... do? Walk away from them things behind us?"

She looked back again. Sure enough, they were coming: two living shadows creeping up the stairs with blades sharpened to points jabbing at the gap between them, looking for something soft to poke into and bleed. The twin tunnels that were the creature's eyes found Abby's and she had to avert her gaze at once to avoid falling under their hypnosis again.

At a point, they left the sheltered roof of the tower and spilled back into

the raging storm. Water beat against her face, wind wormed its way into her robes, and the chaotic sounds of the storm deafened her, but Patches kept them moving. Abby wished she wasn't so damned weak, and that she could run beside him instead of burdening him, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her thighs and calves were burning with exhaustion, and every time they bumped along Patches' forearm, she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming in anguish.

Back beneath shelter, briefly, then down more stairs, turning, more stairs, running, back outside. It all happened so quickly, her mind spun with disorientation. It wasn't until Patches' breath grew so labored he fell to a knee and she went spilling out to cold, wet, cobblestone that she was able to piece together where they were. She got her hands beneath her and lifted her head. Before them, the long stretch of barrier-flanked stone that was the bridge connecting the Burg and the Parish lay in wait.

Abby used the barrier to clamber to her feet and spin back to face Patches. The Hyena was still on a knee, red in the face, gasping for his lost wind. Her eyes floated over his shoulder to the bridge's side entrance, and just as it did, the Darkwraiths came spilling out after them.

"Patches!" She wailed, though her shout was partially lost by a shrill rake of wind across the bridge that sent a torrent of rain into her eyes and mouth.

When her vision cleared again, she saw Patches had made it to his feet, but not quick enough. The Darkwraiths pressed in on him together, jabbing and slicing with black swords that merged with the black night in shadowy swipes seeking to bring death upon their target. Patches got his spear up for one swipe, stepped back from a jab, and deflected a third, but his feet tangled and he spilled back to his ass. The creatures towered over him with swords at the ready.

Abby stepped forth and hurled her opened palm at them. Fire blossomed and went spiraling out in a twist of searing orange and red. It sailed the short distance between them in a streak of embers and splashed at their feet, cutting a line between the dark knights and Patches. The attack wasn't much, but it was enough to buy the Hyena time to clamber up, spin, and sprint her way.

Abby wasted no time in joining him, and together they raced across the bridge, their hands up over their brows to keep the rain from blinding them entirely. A quarter of the way across, she stole a glance back. The wraiths were coming; perhaps more furiously than ever. Halfway across: she fell. The fire in her legs had grown simply unbearable, and all at once they gave out on her. Abby went sprawling out with her hands before her, but it did little to stop her chin from slapping against the wet stone. Black curtains covered and uncovered her eyes, and she looked up to see Patches frozen uncertainly in place. Go, she would've told him if she could speak.

You're not a bad man, she'd said to the Hyena the day before he sprung her from Ben's grave, and in that moment, Patches proved it. He muttered a curse, lifted his spear, and came back for her.

"Get your ass up you bloody fool!" He bellowed, taking her reaching hand and yanking her to her feet. She fell into his arms and-

-Patches shoved her aside just in time to deflect the jab of a sword with the tip of his spear. The sound of metal clanging metal echoed through the cluster of buildings that sprung from the ground beneath the bridge's belly.

Patches recoiled from the blow. The second wraith joined the fray with its twin, and together they moved in on the Hyena. One feigned attack, causing Patches to block a strike that never came, and the other ripped its sword in a vertical swipe that sliced Patches' spear clean in two. The halves fell apart, useless, to the bridge and Patches was left with nothing to defend himself. The wraith lifted a black boot and thrust it into his chest. Patches went flailing backwards to skid along the slick stones till he came to a rest beside Abby.

Together, they lay in a useless pile as the wraiths stalked forth to loom over them. Abby dug her elbows into the bridge, ignoring how painful it was, and tried crawling back, but even that required more energy than she had. Patches could not seem to move himself, staring up at their approaching death with his teeth chattering.

It's over, Abby thought, and only wished she could reach out and calm Patches one last time so that his passing would be in peace.

The wraiths angled their swords downwards and-

-lifted their gaze up. The black tunnels of their eyes fixated on the bridge behind Abby and almost instantly, their posture changed. Before, they looked like hunters playing with their prey. At thatmoment, though, they looked like the prey; wary and cautious and focused.

Abby did not understand until a moment later, when a third knight emerged from behind them and passed right between Patches and herself.

Thunder growled, lightning flashed, and in its ephemeral glow, she saw an incredibly tall knight with an even more incredibly longspear and a helmet that was fashioned to look like a lion's head, frozen forever in a ferocious snarl. The knight stepped between Patches and her own fallen bodies and the Darkwraiths with the long spear held nonchalant down at his waist. The wraiths eyed this new combatant with what might have been curiosity.

He looks so familiar, Abby thought, but did not waste time pondering that idea further. She crawled to Patches, gripped his collar, and motioned for

him to move with her behind the indented bit of stone that provided at least some sense of cover from the wraiths. He went without protest, his widened eyes held on the mysterious new knight.

When they'd traversed the short gap to the sectioned-off bit of bridge, a staircase leading down to the bridge's lower level at their feet, Abby poked her head around the edge to watch the knight, and another strange realization washed over her. This is the same spot, she thought. The same spot I watched from when Lautrec fought Kirk in defense of Quelana and myself so long ago. Another moment that has come back around, but then again, I suppose that's the thing about cycles... She faced Patches, half- expecting him to have disappeared down the stairs as he had the last time. He had not. "Who is that knight?"

He shrugged, pulling breaths that misted the air before him when released. "I don't know, but if he's going to fight for us, keep quiet and let 'em!"

Abby peeked back out. The lion-knight moved with a slow, deliberate, pace reserved for either those who were extremely confident in their abilities... or those simply bluffing they were. She hoped for the former. His spear came up to his shoulders, laid horizontal so that either end could almost tickle at the bridge's barriers, and moved in on the wraiths. They, apparently, were through giving ground, and moved in to attack instead.

They attempted the same trick they'd used on Patches. One feigned and the other struck a moment later. The lion-knight did not fall for the tactic. He ignored the feigning blow and countered the true one, whipping his spear around in a wide arch to swat the wraith's sword aside. The twin wraith seized the opportunity to jab at the knight, but his maddeningly- long spear curved back around and blunted the attack down. If the Darkwraiths were capable of anger, Abby believed she saw it come across their posture. All at once, they pressed in with a flurry of attack: pokes, jabs, swings, thrusts. The lion-knight backpedalled, twisting his spear around with inhuman speed and bringing the night alive with a chorus of clings and clangs as he deflected blow after blow. He must've seen a spot of weakness, however, for after a pair of jabs came and went, he slid his grips down to the end of the spear and swung it around in a tight arch. The blunt center collided with one of the wraith's shoulders, sending it tumbling into its twin.

He looks so familiar, Abby thought again as she watched the battle, and just like that: it came to her. The knight was familiar because she'd seem him in a dream; seen him standing at the Dark Sun Gwyndolin's side just before the hollows marched on the Archives. He was the Dragonslayer. He was Ornstein. "Patches!" She whispered, gripping the Hyena's arm. "We have to run again! That is no friend! That's the Knight Ornstein!"

"O-Ornstein!?" Patches poked his head up over the barrier. "Impossible!

...isn't it?"

"We have to-" Abby's words trailed when something gripped her by the shoulder. She snapped her head around, ready to burn her attacker if she could muster the energy to get the pyromancy glove up, and her eyes landed on- "Lady Rhea!"

Beneath the cream-white hood pulled up over her head to shield the relentless rains from her face, the priestess smiled. "Abby! Are you alright!?"

Abby's heart pounded so hard in her chest, she could only return the smile and nod.

As thunder rumbled across the skies, Rhea turned her gaze on Patches. "Hyena," she muttered angrily. "Abby, is he responsible for whatever happened at the church?"

"No!" Abby said at once. "Patches... he rescued me. He's on our side."

Patches swallowed but said nothing, and Rhea, after a moment's hesitation, seemed to take her word for it. She fixed her pretty eyes back on Abby's. "The church is gone, Abby. Dom and Ana and Sieg and Andre... they're gone, too."

"I know. I... I was there, Rhea. The man calling himself Griggs is not 'Griggs' at all, but the mad sorcerer himself! He is Logan, and he manipulated Ben into slaughtering them all and burning the church down!"

Rhea pulled a breath that released in a sigh. "We know about Logan, Abby, we just... we didn't think we'd lose Dom and the rest."

Beyond the priestess' shoulder, Abby spotted another figure coming forth in a dash from the Parish-side of the bridge. She watched the approach until Rickert's features took form and he came sliding up beside Rhea. "Abby!" He cheered. "Well, I'll be damned! Still kicking, are you? Good for you." He craned his neck up over the barrier. "Our Dragonslayer found himself a couple of wraiths, huh?"

Abby's mouth fell agape. "The Dragonslayer is..."

Rickert grinned. "One of us now, yeah. Let's hope he earns the new title of 'Wraithslayer' though, eh?" His eyes flicked to Patches. "Hyena... thought I smelled something foul."

"Piss off," Patches muttered.

A moment later, the sound of heavy boots beating against stone crescendoed up to their party, and Abby leaned out to see Tarkus, fully adorned in his black iron armor, come sprinting forth in the storm.

Rickert rose as the big man neared and threw his arms up. "Cradlebreaker! Found something just up your alley!" He nodded to the battle waging on the bridge. "Couple of wraiths in need of a beheading. You up for it?"

A hearty fit of laughter rumbled beneath Tarkus' helm as he nodded his head. The slits of his eyes moved to Abby and he joyously shouted, "Abby! You're alive!'

"Tarkus," she greeted with a bow of her head. There was a feeling creeping up from a part of her soul she'd thought she might've lost; a feeling so strange to her among these days of storms and wraiths and suffering that it took her a moment to place, but when she had, it filled her aching limbs with an energy that soothed them and brought her to her feet. Hope, she thought, unable to keep the smile from her face. It is hope.

"Slow now, Abby," Rhea commanded, taking hold of her arm and keeping her steady. "You don't look ready to go off fighting wraiths anytime soon, so don't even think about it, alright?"

Her reply was to simply throw her arms around the priestess and squeeze. Rhea's posture was stiff for only a moment before laughing and hugging her back. When Abby's eyes opened, they landed upon two more members of their ever-increasing party.

Petrus, squat and round and heavy in his thick plate armor, was lumbering forth with a mace clutched in his hands. Beside him, towering over the man in a fall of white hair and white robes, the crossbreed Priscilla took cautious steps forward, an enormous scythe clutched in her hands.

What in Izalith happened in their travels? Abby pondered, but figured there would be time for those questions once the wraiths were dealt with, and cast the thought aside. As she was readying to face the dark monsters, one final traveler came soldiering forth in the storm, and the sight of him brought a swell of joy in her heart so tremendous she had to grip at her chest till it passed.

The Knight Solaire, fully adorned in his armor, took up the tail end of the party, his shield at his chest, his straight sword held at his waist. When the eyeslits of his helm landed on Abby, he pulled the thing from his head, and the warm, inviting, face beneath lifted into a smile. "My lady," he greeted with a bow.

Abby stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. "Solaire... thank the Gods."

"Hey!" Rickert's shout pulled both their attention his way. "They're running! Ha! You cowardly bastards! Get back here!"

Abby looked to see he was right. The Darkwraiths were falling back in retreat, covering each other's movements with meticulous precision as they kept their swords at the ready.

Tarkus chased after them a bit, batting his fist against his breast plate. "That's right you craven bastards! Run! And tell your master we're coming for him next!"

The Dragonslayer watched the retreat in silence, his spear held down at his side. When the wraiths had made a good bit of ground in retreat, the tall knight faced Solaire and stared as if... as if waiting for orders.

"Let them go for now," Solaire said. "Their day is coming soon enough." He faced Abby again and his brow furrowed. "My lady, are you alright? Abby?"

She had to shake her head to pull herself from her daze. "Hm?"

"You looked... troubled, my lady."

"No, Solaire, not troubled..." she said, feeling the smile rise up her face. "In fact, quite the opposite." She turned to watch the retreating wraiths as they vanished back beyond the far side of the bridge. "For the first time since I saw those monsters emerge from the darkness itself at the church, I've realized something, Solaire..." She found his eyes, those steely, stoic, eyes that housed the courageous leadership within that Lordran had been so desperately lacking. "I've realized...

"We can win."

Chapter 62

The first thing Quelana's eyes fell upon was Lautrec, and in that moment she nearly birthed a ball of fire in her palm and doused him with it. He's come to kidnap you from Blighttown, an inner voice shouted far too loudly in her ear. Kill him before Patches can sneak up behind you. The thought bred paranoia, and she snapped her head around to face her phantom attacker, lashes of fire involuntarily whipping from the tips of her fingers. Patches was not there, however, and neither was Blighttown. Only a long, encompassing, sprawl of ice, domed up around them as if they'd been swallowed into the belly of some enormous frosted monster. Stone pillars poked up around the dome's perimeter like icy fingers clawing up from the earth, and a tangle of frosted roots wove intricate patterns that crisscrossed and spiraled around hunks of rock and the haggard slabs that made up the chamber's crumbling floor, and the only thought that Quelana could muster was: Home. Not Blighttown. I am home.

"...Quelana."

Lautrec's voice pulled her gaze back to him. He was halted (frozen) in place, his mouth agape, his hand floating tentatively between them, as if it reached any further, she might dissipate. His eyes were narrowed onto hers, a look of such intense focus burning within, it almost frightened her. He took a cautious step closer, pulling a breath that came queer and short against his lips.

Her head spun with confusion, and the only thing Quelana could think to ask was, "Where is Laurentius?"

"He's dead. I killed him," he whispered, uncharacteristic tenderness in his voice.

"Dead?" She closed her eyes and saw the pyromancer as she'd seen him last: suspended in a frozen mass of water, pulling her down, dragging her into the black abyss that was Izalith's never-ending bottom. The image made her gasp for air and claw at her throat, her heart suddenly trying to hammer through her ribcage.

Whatever caution had slowed Lautrec's approach was thrown to the wind then as he rushed to her and took her in his arms. Quelana fought him only briefly until she felt the warmth of his embrace, and at once took hold of him as well. "Lautrec... what has happened!?" She whispered, her words half muffled against his chest. In that moment, nothing made sense and her mind felt as decidedly empty as the chamber around them.

Lautrec's fingers were in here hair, tangled, then against her cheek; his arms squeezing as if she'd float away if they wrapped her any looser. "They brought you back," his words came as softly as his hand upon her

face. "They brought you back, Quelana."

"They brought me..." Her voice trailed off as realization washed over her. She'd seen something else when she'd first woken. Something she'd ignored; perhaps because her mind could not make sense of it; perhaps because it did not want to. She looked to it then, leaning over Lautrec's forearm and the raised bit of stone she'd woken upon to look at the icy floor. Laying sprawled out upon it was her oldest sister, just as pretty as she'd seen her last with the exception of her gaped mouth and the lifeless, empty, stare that peered into nothing, and-Quelana knew in that moment-forever would... for her sister was dead.

"No," she muttered. Tears swelled in her eyes at once. "Lautrec, I don't... how did this..." She tightened her hands on his arms and held him far enough at bay for her to stare into his eyes. "What has happened? Tell me... tell me everything. Please."

He held her look, took a deep breath, and did.

Quelana hung intently on ever word that came from his lips; her hands gripping him tightly and refusing him movement until the tale was over. It was a story that began with his plunging into the frozen lake after Laurentius had tried drowning her, rescuing her, and carrying her deeper into Izalith for no other reason than he did not know where else to take her. He told her of the cold that had took hold of him and tried to drift him off to sleep on his travels, but being woken and guided repeatedly by the ghost of his dead sister. He told of her eldest sibling coming and finding them freezing to death in the midst of Izalith's plains, casting her spell of mind control over him, and sending him to a deep sleep. He told of being woken and healed and... finding out she had been dead for a long time.

Quelana, for the first time since he began, released Lautrec and rubbed at her chest. I was dead. I was gone. And there was nothing. The thought woke such profound terror within her, she grabbed for Lautrec's arms again at once and urged him to continue; eager for the sound of his voice to drive the dreadful thought away. The next part of his tale, though- which covered a long and revealing conversation he'd had with her oldest sibling-was so confusing and strange, she could only sit there in his arms gaping up at him until it was finished, and when it was, a long time passed before she could bring herself to speak.

"My sisters..." She blinked and a torrent of tears rolled her cheek. "You're saying my sisters didn't hate me?"

"No," Lautrec said, running his thumb beneath her eye to wipe the tears away. "Quelana... they loved you. They respected you. Admired you. And they died to see you return."

Died. She turned back on her eldest sister and the sight of her lying there

motionless sent a terrible, penetrating, hurt into Quelana's heart. She swung her legs from the platform, nearly tumbled off in her hurry to descend it, and collapsed beside her sister's corpse, taking her head in her hands; the pretty blonde strands of her hair pouring through her fingers like streams of a golden waterfall. Quelana leaned down to kiss her fallen sibling's brow and for the first time in a long time, allowed herself to sob; a heavy, sorrowful, cry that heaved her chest and hurt her throat. Her tears fell for the sisters she had separated from and the time they'd lost and the love she still held in her heart for them that would never have its chance to be reciprocated, for they were gone then... and only she remained.

When she finally mustered the strength to pull away-and that was not for quite a bit-she trembled in every place a person couldtremble and the world was a blurry, streaking, mess from the glossy orbs that had become her eyes. Lautrec, perhaps out of respect, had not interrupted while she'd held her dead sister, but when she looked upon him then, she needed him more than she'd ever needed anything in her life, and nearly fell into his arms when he approached. Lautrec was perhaps the one person in Lordran who could understand the pain she was experiencing. They were boththe last living members of their families then, parents and siblings all vanished from the world through terrible means, leaving only the two of them as the last living descendants of their bloodlines. They had had complex, estranged, relations with their siblings... and both situations had ended in utter tragedy. And now... now, she thought, they only had one another.

Quelana pressed her cheek to his chest and closed her eyes. Lautrec cupped the back of her head softy and ran his fingers through her air. Neither of them spoke for a long while until Quelana finally croaked, "...what now?"

"I made your sister a promise," he answered, his voice vibrating his chest. Quelana found the sensation comforting against the side of her face. "As I made you a promise once. I kept my word to you. I intend to keep my word to her as well."

Quelana pulled away from him frowning and swiping fresh tears from her face. "What promise?"

"I told you," he began, "They made you a boat. Your sisters crafted you an escape from these damned lands of ours. Quelana... they meant for you to sail away from this cold world... and venture into the next." He reached for her hand and squeezed. "Let me take you to it. Let me see you out of this nightmare Lordran has become. ...let me keep my promise to your sister."

"We can't just leave, Lautrec," she said at once, the faces of those that still remained circling (cycling) across her mind's eye. "What about Solaire? Abby? Domhnall and Tarkus and Andre and Rhea and, and... and everyone

else? I can't..." Her eyes flicked to her dead sister's face. She sighed. "I can't just abandon them."

Lautrec's eyes narrowed and, briefly, she saw the familiar look of focused anger flash in his eyes. As he held her gaze, however, it faded, and a somewhat-desperate look replaced it. "Listen to me, Quelana. Your sisters sacrificed everything to ensure you'd have a chance at leaving this place. Now I stand before you telling you I've found a way, and you're refusing it? Solaire and the rest, if they even still live, can fend for themselves. They don't need you or I any longer. Haven't you sacrificed enough? Haven't you endured enough? You've earned this escape, and now it lays before you in wait. All you have to do is simply reach out... and take it."

She frowned and looked between his eyes. "And If I don't? If I refuse you? Would you bind me in ropes again and take me from Lordran anyway as your prisoner?"

"You know I wouldn't."

"Then you'll have to defend me if you intend to keep that promise to my oldest sister, Lautrec, because I'm not leaving yet. Not until Lordran is saved," she told him, and when he sighed and began to look away, she took hold of his chin and forced his eyes back to hers. "The ones still left to Lordran... I know you haven't grown close to any of them, but I count them all as friends of mine. And I cannot walk away from them. Surely, you understand that... don't you?"

For a moment, he said nothing, and while Quelana waited, she listened to the subtle shifting of rock beneath their feet as Izalith moaned and groaned. "I lost you once, witch," he finally said; quiet and soft. "And when I did, I realized how much you mean to me. I... I have nothing else."

It was Lady Rhea's words that came to her in that moment before she could stop them. That man is broken, the priestess had said of Lautrec during one of Andre's many meals of stew at the Parish. A man whose adult life has been dictated and domineered by obsessive rage? A man like that is undeniably broken, Quelana, and a man like Lautrec... he likely can't ever be un-broken. It had been a rather uncharacteristically callous thing of Rhea to say, but staring into Lautrec's grey eyes then, Quelana could not help but see some of the truth in it. Before her was a man who knew of murder and combat and death and vengeance... and, perhaps, little else. A man who had lived a life of obsession of revenge against a sister he'd never carried out. And now... he was a man who had perhaps turned his obsession elsewhere: to her.

She lifted a hand to his face. Lautrec tensed only briefly before closing his eyes and letting her stroke his cheek. It is I who has to take care of you now, Lautrec, she thought. And I will. For Rhea may have been right at one time, but she hasn't seen what I've seen. There is more to you. "We will help Knight Solaire," she said at last. "And then... then I will let you

keep your promise, Lautrec. I will leave Lordran. As my... as my sisters intended." The thought of the open sea and the unknown that lied beyond send a fresh grip of trepidation around her chest, and she had to squeeze Lautrec's hands until it passed. Can I? Can I truly be so brave?

When his eyes came open again, there was a familiar hunger in them. He took hold of her, leaned forth, and-

-Quelana pulled away. Her gaze fell at once to her dead sister. "I don't want to be here any longer if that's alright with you. And my sister... there isn't much ground to bury her in, but... I can't just leave her like that." When she turned back to him, the hunger was still in his eyes, and Quelana knew the time would come for her to satiate it, but it was not then. Not yet.

"Alright..." He said with a sigh. "Alright."

It didn't take Lautrec long to find his shotels and armor. Her sister had stashed them away in a smaller room off the chamber's side, and when he emerged fully adorned in the golden plating, his curved blades sheathed once more at his hips, he looked much less like the desperate man she'd woken to and much more like the warrior he'd been throughout their journey together. That was a good thing. They'd likely need the warrior in the coming days.

He used his shotels to hack out a small pit in the frozen grounds just outside the chamber. Quelana stood at his side, stroking her dead sister's hair and watching the cold winds sweep across the barren plains that Izalith had become; barren plains that she'd once called home and had played games with her sisters as a child. When Lautrec finished, he moved to her, took her eldest sibling gently in his arms, and lowered her into the grave. The world became a blur once again as Quelana watched her big sister lowered into her final resting grounds, but a thought came that brought her at least some sense of comfort. She has returned home. From Izalith's soil she came, and to Izalith's soil she's returned. ...that cycle, at least, is complete.

When he'd finished, Lautrec swiped at his brow and came up breathing heavy from exertion. Quelana thanked him, embraced him, and held him a moment; though whether it was for his benefit or hers, she could not say. When she finally released him, they laced their hands in one another's and faced Izalith together one last time. Quelana did not look upon it as it was, though, but as it had been once before: alive and warm and... home. She blinked away a tear and internally said goodbye. She doubted she'd ever see the place again.

Back inside the chamber, Lautrec led her past the raised slab she'd woken upon and into the cradling arms of a massive, frost-encrusted, tree. The crumbling stone that made up the chamber's floor gave way there to a dark pit with a thick branch tangling out over it. Lautrec released her,

dropped to it, and spun to catch her. When she was safely in his arms, he carried her carefully up the slope of the icy branch and beneath the tree's belly before releasing her. They moved past a web of thin branches, little icicles dangling preciously from their stems and falling to shatter at their feet as the clawed by, and headed right beneath the core of the tree.

There, lying in wait surrounded by a thicket of branches and snow, the glowing, golden, soul of the Bed of Chaos resided; a monstrous creation said to have formed out of the destruction that took Izalith when her mother attempted to recreate the First Flame. There were those who believed Quelana's mother's soul itself resided within, but if it had, Quelana held no reverence for the thing. What's gone is gone, she thought. And a strong flame does not waver. She knelt before it, scooped the strange thing into her hands-it was warm and slid about in her fingers as if molding to them-and tucked it within her robes. Lautrec watched her with a quiet looked of consternation. Likely, he knew taking the soul all but sealed their destiny. They had to return to Solaire and the rest then, for they had something the others dearly required.

The Lord Soul acquired, Lautrec explained that her sister had told him of an old and ancient path that connected the lands of Izalith with the Great Hollow. Quelana hadn't needed explanation. She'd known of the path since her birth. As a child, she'd often traversed the dark, twisting, tunnel, curious as to what wonders may have been held on the other side. She'd never made it very far, however, before one of her older sisters came rushing up behind to scare her and haul her back to Izalith. The thought saddened her. She cast it aside.

The path was carved into the belly of the chamber, and they had to shuffle around the back of the giant tree to find it. It was a slitted crack that etched a black seam up the wall, and before long, they were standing before it; a cold, stale, air seeping from within. It wasn't the most inviting thing to look upon, but Lautrec's hand reached for hers, squeezed, and without further hesitation, they entered.

Neither spoke much on the journey through the tunnel. It was a long, dark, path that Quelana had to constantly illuminate with lashes of flames to guide their feet. The ground curved, twisted, sloped, flattened out momentarily, and then did it all again, and more than once, Quelana thought that perhaps it was taking them in circles (cycles) to forever tread in endless repetition. Then-after a dozen more seemingly arbitrary turns- the tunnel widened and broke into a long descent of jagged rock and she felt at once the coldness of Izalith flee from their backs. At the very end of the climb a pinhole-sized bead of light was seeping into the darkness, and the sight birthed a stir of hope in Quelana that she had been sorely missing since awakening. She tightened her hold on Lautrec's hand, joined closer together with him, and started in on the last leg of the uncomfortably dark and narrow path.

When they reached the barren circle of stone that was the descent's

bottom, one last climb awaited them to the tunnel exit, and staring up at the glowing edges of light that rimmed the hole, Quelana could hear a soft swooshing sound scraping the terrain outside. Beside her, Lautrec's eyes were narrowed onto the hole and one of his hands had released her to fall to the hilt of his shotel.

"Have you ever been there?" Quelana asked. "To The Great Hollow that is." He shook his head.

"Neither have I." She swallowed and looked back to the hole. The swoosh filled the tunnel again.

"Do you want me to go first? Make sure there is-"

"No," she answered. "I want to go... together."

Lautrec stared at her, and in that quiet moment, Quelana thought something passed between them unspoken. A pact, perhaps, or a bond. They had started this long and maddening journey together in what felt like a lifetime ago, and now... now she knew they were bound to finish it together; one way or another. Lautrec nodded, and she knew he understood. His hand squeezed hers. They climbed.

Lordran had seen its share of the misery and deformities that had sprung up to plague nearly every living thing since they'd return to it clutched in the talons of the great crow. The skies were fading to black and had grown sick with ill weather. The grasses and flowers were all but dead, and when Quelana's journey had passed through the Darkroot Garden, the trees and shrubbery there had a sagging, listless, posture to them that had felt like looking upon a land in defeat; one that was awaiting its inevitable end. The great cities and keeps that her pupils had so often spoken of in Blighttown were but mere husks of the promised wealth of beauty she'd imagined; crumbling and decaying and bleak. Lordran, once, may have been a land worth dreaming of, but by the time Quelana had reached it, the only word that could accurately describe its state of being was hollow.

The Great Hollow, however, knew no such sorrow.

"Gods..." Lautrec muttered at her side as the two crawled out of the tunnel and rose to their feet to face the unknown land before them.

If there wereGods still left in Lordran, Quelana thought they must have been residing there. All around them, a swirl of beautiful colors blanketed the sky in a heavy, shifting, fog; one which carried the soft glow of light that had been sorely missing from Izalith. A wind came-not harshly as it had been in her frosted home, but softly... as if a welcoming hand was sweeping down to greet them-and the colorful swirl twisted and reached across the skies overhead in a breathtaking display of streaking pastel. Standing sentinel on the vast horizon that encased them, an army of trees rose from a great, deep-blue, ocean to race up into the fog overhead;

vanishing into its belly. The waters the trees birthed from were responsible for the swooshing she'd heard. They raced inwards to reach cool, blue, fingers onto the land, cutting trenches into the sandy floor that was the central island Lautrec and herself stood upon. The water blanketed its way up the shoreline towards them and Lautrec stepped away, but Quelana held her ground and let the cool liquid swirl around her bare feet. She smiled-an expression she had began to fear she'd never wear again-and looked to Lautrec. "Is this a dream?"

Lautrec swept his gaze across the endless ocean and the horizon beyond and pulled a deep breath of air that, Quelana thought, was the freshest she'd ever smelled in her life. "I don't understand how this can be. How has this land escaped whatever's happening to Lordran above?"

Quelana shook her head. She did not know. What she didknow was that she wanted Lautrec's hand in hers again, and was quick to join at his side and lace her fingers between his own. The tide retreated back into the sprawling blue carpet that surrounded them, and as Quelana watched it go, she thought, Lordran is not dead. At least not yet. We stand in its last living vestige.

For awhile, neither of them spoke. They simply stood in one another's embrace, watching the ebb and flow of the water as its beautiful, haunting, voice whispered against the sand. Quelana hadn't felt so deeply at peace since their adventure began, and when she looked to Lautrec and saw the concerned lines that had been gripping his face from the moment she'd awoken were gone, she knew he'd felt it too.

His eyes flicked sideways and narrowed into the horizon. Quelana followed the line of his gaze at once but found nothing but water and trees and fog. She looked back to him and gently guided his chin towards her. "What is it?"

He swallowed. "I thought I saw something. That's all." She thought on it a moment before asking, "...Anastacia?" He nodded.

Quelana returned her eyes to the horizon. Will you come to watch over me, my sisters? She wondered. Will you follow me to the end of my journey as Ana follows Lautrec to his? For one foolish moment, she'd actually expected an answer to come rising up out of the waters. It did not, though, and she found herself looking behind them to the massively- wide brim of a trunk that twisted up out of the sand. A gnarled branch hook down to their feet, as if extending its hand in wait for their arrival.

"I suppose that's the path back to the surface," she said, finding it an effort to make the words come; she did not particularly want to leave the serenity that was the Great Hollow.

Lautrec glanced back and shook his head. "We're not going to the surface. Not yet."

Quelana frowned. "Not going? I don't... what do you mean?"

He nodded forward and she faced the Great Hollow once more. The thin walkway of sand they stood upon widened out to an island further along. Beyond that, a path curved through the water and around another large tree trunk before disappearing behind its brim.

"If you won't leave Lordran with me," Lautrec began, "then I'm going to need some answers about what exactly is happening to this place."

"Answers?"

"Your sister told me she had a connection to the world above. An old, wise, connection that knew a great many things. She believed that, perhaps, he was the first thing to have ever appeared in Lordran. And now... now he lies not but a few hundred feet away, and I have no intentions of letting this opportunity pass us by."

The pyromancer Laurentius' words came to her then, concerning his worship of dragons: We walk the Path, my lady. The one, true, Path that all virtuous men must walk should they hope for salvation. And our Path will one day be a pilgrimage, and that pilgrimage will take us to the Great Hollow, where our Father Eternal awaits to grant us atonement for the sins of our kind and edify our souls into a higher state of being. She narrowed her eyes on Lautrec's. "The dragon? The Everlasting Dragon? That is whom you speak of, isn't it?"

Lautrec nodded. "If we're going to risk everything by going back and fighting alongside Solaire... I need to know, Quelana. I need to know what exactly it is we are fighting for."

She stared down the path lying in wait. The thought of standing before a living, breathing, dragon frightened her, but she had made enough demands of Lautrec to know she could not deny him one of his own. She faced him, swallowed, and nodded. "Alright. If this is what you want... we'll go to the dragon. But... what if he doesn't wantto answer your questions."

"He will," Lautrec said. "I know he will, because when I saw my sister's ghost walking atop the waters a few moments ago, she was pointing the way forward to him." He looked to his hands and sighed. "And Ana hasn't let me astray yet. I... I don't think she'd start now."

A tremor rumbled deep beneath their feet, sending grains of sand shaking and dancing atop the shoreline and birthing a wave in the water that lopped up as high as a man grown before splashing back down again. When the rumbling trailed off, the two of them were left in the wake of its silence, and Quelana slipped her arm beneath Lautrec's. "Let us go,

then. I think I might have a few questions in need of answers myself."

And so they went. They walked along the shoreline, just out of reach of the grasping fingers of water that came and went and came again, whispering across the sands. The path widened, but they kept to the shore. They passed a massive clamshell whose mouth gaped in endless wonder of the beauty around it. Further on, they walked past a high rim of sand that had mounded up into a curved wall and loomed over them as they passed under its shadow. Further still and the path narrowed once again at the foot of an enormous tree, whose dark brown trunk was crawling with vines and branches seeping up from the waters around it to hold the thing in a damp embrace. The island of sand became a mere line as it curved around the tree, and they treaded atop it slowly and carefully. When it wound back around the other side, a final stretch of sand lie in wait. It did not widen out again, however. Instead, it slithered forth into the water like a brittle, brown, snake worming its way across the endless sea to poke into the belly of a fortress of roots that burrowed up from the ocean to form into a protective cocoon.

"He's there," Quelana said quietly.

It had not been a question, but Lautrec answered anyway. "I imagine he has to be."

She had to crane her neck back to follow the roots and branches that crisscrossed one another to a point so high it was lost in the foggy blanket above. I feel so small, she thought, and at once realized that feeling had been with her since they'd first emerged onto the sands of the hollow. If nothing else, this mysterious new land Quelana found herself in was likely the most humbling place she'd ever set foot in. The world was big and she was small, and one day she'd pass away and it would go on without her, indifferent to her absence. The thought, somehow, was calming, and she found herself pulling at Lautrec's elbow to start them moving again, suddenly unafraid of what might lie in wait.

They traveled the snaking path of sand without speaking, but Lautrec kept a hand gently rubbing at her forearm and Quelana was thankful again for his presence. Whatever they were on the cusp of facing, they would face it together.

The twist of sand carried them in a long, curving, pattern; the tides of water on either side swooshing and whispering and swooshing again as they walked. Then the path took one final turn before leveling out into a long, pointed, finger of sand that barreled right into the cocoon of roots. The path there was overgrown with thickets of branches reaching their dark arms above the sand to hold hands, and at the very end-as small as the pinpoint of light had been exiting Izalith's conjoining tunnels-a great black beast lay in slumber.

Quelana met Lautrec's gaze but if there were words to be said, neither of

them could find them. They pulled closer together and started forward without further delay. As they walked the final leg of the path, Lautrec needing to duck his head a few times to avoid the arching branches that followed along above, Quelana watched as the beast they approached came into focus. She saw massive, dark, wings folded down against a body that was comparatively thin; their tips pointed like a blade's, the leathery folds of their skin layered atop one another to look like the bones of some great, monstrous, ribcage. Their was a long neck stretching away from the body, and as they neared Quelana saw it was coated in dark fur, not entirely dissimilar to the fur of the taurus demons they'd encountered in Izalith. Closer still and she saw 'dark' was an understatement: the beast's fur was as black as charred rock, and an equally black snout protruded from the creature's head. The thing's eyes were, thankfully, closed.

The final detail she noticed as they drew up to the rim of the dragon's raised platform was the monster's horns. They were wide but tapered, and the one poking out of the right side of the thing's head was angled downwards and gnarled; like so many of the tree roots they'd passed to arrive before him. Even something immortal can be flawed, Quelana thought, though she wasn't sure if the notion was a good thing or a bad one.

Standing a mere few feet from the slumbering giant, the dragon's breathing was as loud as any wind Quelana had ever heard. Its enormous body rose and fell, like the tides of the hollow's ocean, and each time it did, a dusting of dirt kicked up around the gaping nostrils at the end of the thing's snout.

A few moments passed and Quelana realized neither of them had said or done a thing since coming before the dragon. She looked to Lautrec and saw his eyes were narrowed intently on the monster, but even he looked uncertain of how to proceed. She was readying to ask him what to do next when he suddenly grabbed her and yanked her behind him protectively, and Quelana returned her gaze to the dragon just in time to see the thing's eyelids-as thick and leathery as the wings on its back-lift to half mast, revealing a twin pair of slitted, dark, eyes that found them at once.

What bravery Quelana had mustered left her at once beneath the monster's stare. It blinked, though its lids never quite managed to raise higher than halfway, and a deafening, earth-trembling, groan rumbled up from the creature's belly to shake the sands underfoot. Quelana clutched tighter to Lautrec as she stared upon the ancient thing awakening from its slumber and had a simple realization wash over her that quelled her fears at once: He is sick.

The dragon's head remained where it was, though its massive wings weakly beat twice against its body and sent a storm of sand to coat the surface of the shallow waters pooled around it. It groaned again and a thick, partially-congealed, ooze that looked like black blood seeped from its nostrils. The dragon pulled a ragged breath so deep its ribcage pressed

against its skin and Quelana saw the beast was terribly emaciated. She found herself compelled to move closer to the beast, and began to do just that when Lautrec's hand fell on her arm and yanked her back.

"He's dying," she said.  
Lautrec kept a vigilant eye held warily on the creature. "It's immortal." "Lautrec, look at him," she pleaded. "He's-"

"Not deaf, little witch," a surprisingly tender voice came thundering up from the creature's snout so sudden, Quelana's breath caught in her chest as she spun on the beast. It's lids were still only half-raised, but the slitted eyes beneath were fixated on her. The dragon's black lips curled away from its mouth to reveal a row of dagger-like teeth, but Quelana did not think the gesture was meant as intimidation. In fact, if she didn't know better, she'd say the beast was actually trying to smile in its own, strange, way.

"You... speak?" She croaked, otherwise unsure of how to respond. Lautrec had unsheathed his shotels and was standing between them again.

"So do you," the dragon spoke slowly and heavily, as if every word was a labor to pull from its bone-thin chest. "We have that in common I suppose, little witch." The dragon's slitted eyes moved to Lautrec. "And you human... I've waited a long time for you."

Lautrec-whether the action was conscious or subconscious-lifted his shotel up a bit higher and swallowed as he stared at the he giant laying before him. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I've been following along with your journey for quite some time, human. Yours too, little witch. It has been... interesting to watch develop."

Lautrec shook his head. "Impossible. How could you have seen anything lying down here this whole time?"

"Ah, but the Great Hollow runs beneath the entirety of the world. What happens above will always trickle down into the waters below, and the memories and the hopes and... the despair... they all wash upon my shore and whisper their tales and sing their songs." The beast pulled another impossibly-long breath that released in a groan. "This has been quite some story you've sent down to me. It has helped make this transition easier."

Quelana faced Lautrec and saw the same look of confusion wrinkling his brow that must've been wrinkling her own. When he did not speak, Quelana faced the dragon once again and said, "Are you sick?"

"Yes."  
"...are you going to die?"

"All things must pass, little witch. Even 'everlasting' things, I suppose." The creature's eyes closed and a strange sound rumbled in its throat that Quelana thought might've been the dragon's version of laughter. When the lids lifted again, his eyes bore into her own. "Though what more is a passing than just another transition? Now I am this as you see before you, one day I might be something else. Death is only a doorway, little one."

Lautrec stepped forward and angled his shotel down at the dragon's snout. "I didn't come for riddles and philosophy, dragon, I came for answers. Will you give them to me?"

The creature's eyes moved almost arduously to Lautrec. "But of course, human. You are the seeker and I am the keeper, and our relation is symbiotic. Ask and be answered. Let your curiosities be satiated upon the knowledge I've acquired over an eternity."

"Her sister," Lautrec began, gesturing to Quelana, "said that perhaps you were the very first thing to have ever come to Lordran. Before the Gods. Before Gwyn. Before your brethren dragons. ...is that true?"

"It is true. When the creators created, it was I they started with."

Lautrec crouched so that his face hovered only a few feet from the dragon's own and asked simply, "Why?"

"Ah. The word which starts any long journey of a man's mind. Why... as good a tool to start digging with as any, human."

Lautrec's fist tightened around his shotel and he glared down at the dragon. "Why is this happening to Lordran? Why are we locked in this damned cycle of endless suffering? Why am I seeing my dead sister following me around!? Why, you infernal beast!? Answer me or I'll-"

"Lautrec!" Quelana snapped, darting forth and wrapping him in her arms to pry him from the dragon's snout, which he'd been steadily getting closer to. He fought against her only long enough for his eyes to find hers, and at once his anger subsided. She took him against her and rubbed at his arm as he fumed.

"You still wage war against the dark beast living within you, human," the dragon went on as calmly as ever. "Anger... your kind's most poisonous emotion. I know you want to believe you've overcome your-"

"You don't know me," Lautrec interject. "Don't presume to know what I want."

"Ah, but didn't you hear, human? Everyone wants something."

Lautrec stared at the creature, his mouth coming partially agape, his eyes narrowing with incredulity. Quelana wasn't entirely sure what had passed between the two of them, but she took the gap of silence as opportunity

to ask a question of her own. "If you're dying, dragon... is Lordran dying with you? The Great Cold that came upon it, and now... this storm. And the tremors. What is happening to our world?"

"Lordran..." the beast let the word sit there between them, hanging in the silence. "Lordran is afraid, little witch, and like all fearful things left to stew in their own dread long enough, it is lashing out violently in defense."

"Afraid of what?" "The end."  
"The end of what?" "Everything."

As if on cue, a faint tremor rumbled the earth from some distant pocket of Lordran.

Quelana stared into the dragon's eyes. "That cannot be."

"And yet it is, little witch," the dragon said. "Your human companion spoke of the cycle. He is right. It has been spinning around us endlessly for an eternity, and now it faces its final rotation. That realization has awoken in Lordran, and every strange occurrence you've bore witness to is a result of a world fighting desperately for self preservation."

Lautrec stirred in her arms, and Quelana faced him to see his anger still lurking beneath the tense lines of his brow. "But why is there a cycle at all?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know!?" Lautrec echoed. "Is this a jest!? What sort of answer is that from an damned eternal dragon!?"

"In my eternity of living, I've learned the phrase 'I don't know' is, perhaps, a living beings greatest power," the dragon explained calmly. "It is an admittance of ignorance, and only through such admittance can you cure said ignorance. So, I'm sorry human, but I don't know. I'd like to. But I don't. Such is the way of things."

Lautrec looked as if he were going to start shouting again. Quelana squeezed his forearm and fixed him with a pleading look before he could. He met the look, sighed, and held his tongue. She faced the dragon. "You said every 'strange occurrence' is a result of Lordran fighting for its preservation... does that include Abby and Ben?"

"Yes, I believe so."  
Quelana nodded. "There are two Chosen instead of one, and Abby... she

has a gift. Do you know why?"

The slitted eyes of the dragon found Lautrec. "It was you who started the chain of events that led to your twin Chosen, human, but I know you were not acting of your own accord. It was the man your people have labeled the 'mad sorcerer' whom planted the seed of doubt in your mind about the cycle. The seed blossomed into an idea, and the idea turned to action, as most ideas eventually do. The very action that triggered this 'defense' Lordran has cast upon itself."

Quelana looked to Lautrec. He stared at the dragon in silence for a moment but eventually nodded his head. "It's true. It was Logan who freed me from my cell in the Parish and whispered madness in my ear at night. Madness about the cycle... and about breaking it."

"Breaking the cycle," the dragon said with another groan. "After an eternity of life, there are still few things that frighten me as much as an ambitious man with a dark heart. Yes. 'Logan' is his name. A very bad human. One that I believe the two of you aren't even aware still walks among your people."

"Logan lives?" Quelana asked, and at once her thoughts turned to the day Laurentius had taken her captive and awoken Lautrec before their journey into the Demon Ruins. Lautrec had woken telling her of a dream that his sister was dead and that he'd believed something bad had happened at the church. It was Logan's face that had flashed in her mind's eyes then, and it was the mad sorcerer's face that floated up in the darkness of her thoughts now. She swallowed her trepidation. "He's attacked the church, hasn't he? It was him that killed Lautrec's sister."

"He did not strike the mortal blow," the dragon began, "but he most certainly took her life. The man has manipulated your Chosen boy to his will, and he wields the young man like a weapon against his foes. His foes... are anyone standing between him and what he believes is Lordran's 'new world'."

Lautrec's breath came labored in his chest and his hand clenched and unclenched in fists. Quelana reached for his cheek to stroke it and try to placate some of his rage. He said, "Logan convinced Ben to kill my sister. Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yes. And I am sorry for your loss, human." "And who else did he kill?"

"Domhnall of Zena. Andre of Astora. Sieglinde of Catarina. And every last refugee that survived your battle at the Archives."

"Every last..." Quelana could not finish the sentence; her breath had fled her body. Her head spun with sorrow. "They're all dead?"

"Your mad sorcerer used them to position himself to power and discarded them. Now he commands an army of Darkwraith, and I believe if he is successful in his endeavors... well, perhaps I've gotten ahead of myself, and I believe I still have not answered your question, little witch.

"As I said, it was Logan who mined the wealth and knowledge of information at the Duke's Archive Library and ascertained the true nature of our world and its cycle. He then set out on a mad quest to break said cycle, and his first step in doing so was finding a man to do the hard work for him. That man is you, human," the dragon said, turning his gaze on Lautrec. "He found a man he believed he could manipulate and set you out to break the cycle, and in a way: he was successful.

"You put together a party and entered grounds I believe our creators never intended any of us to enter. The Undead Asylum. And in doing so, you triggered Lordran into a state of defense. By threatening the cycle, you unleashed a series of events designed to ensure it continues. Forever."

Lautrec's eyes fell to his hands. He closed them to fists. "Then all this suffering... it is my fault."

"Logan's fault, human. It was his desire for more that began this whole thing."

"Abby and Ben," Quelana began. "...if Lordran is trying to ensure this 'cycle' continues, why send us two different Chosen and give one a gift?"

"I am no Creator, little witch, but if I had to make an assumption, I would say Lordran is aware the human heart desires the freedom of choice, and in providing you with two Chosen, polar opposites of one another, it would ensure humanity would rally around one. And, in fact, that nearly happened. If either the humans or the hollows had brought your Abigail to the Kiln and had her light the flames, the cycle would have went on. Of course, at a point, if it had ben your Benjamin who'd attempted to become Lordran's 'Dark Lord', the result would have been the same: the cycle; always the cycle. It was quite a clever trick, really. Show two paths, but ensure their destinations are the same."

Quelana thought on it. "And Abby's ability? Her... 'calming trick' or whatever it is. Why does she have it?"

"Both Chosen have been bestowed upon with a unique ability, little witch, not just one."

"Ben? Ben can do the same thing?"

"No. The Chosen, perhaps to further demonstrate their stark opposition to one another, have been gifted with physical manifestations of what they represent. Your Abigail does not 'calm' people, little witch, she controls them. Her gift is the very thing she would have brought to Lordran if

she'd been the one to light the flames of the Kiln. Control. Order. ...the cycle.

Your Benjamin, on the other hand, has the opposed gift; one he has mistakenly believed is the 'gift of death'. It is not. It is chaos. It is disorder to Abby's order, and, unfortunately, by sending it into a man's body through his hand, he can destroy all semblance of control within them. The result, so far, has always ended in death. Now, perhaps in a cruel twist of irony, that chaos is exactly what he will bring to Lordran if Logan is successful in dragging him before Gwyn, slaying the Lord of Cinder, and leaving the flames to wither and die, and the world to plunge into darkness."

"But you said either option was nothing more than a ruse," Quelana said. "Why now would Logan and Ben be able to break the cycle instead of restarting it?"

"Because your 'mad sorcerer' has unleashed another world upon Lordran, one which seeks out and thrives upon darkness, and it is coming. Our Creators left us a machine with no purpose, at least one I have not been able to ascertain in my eternity of living, that Logan constructed and you two turned on. A machine that gave our world a glimpse into another of our Creators' creations. But that trick worked both ways. Whatever you saw, it saw you as well, and now the worlds are merging together."

"Merging together?"

"Darkness... if Lordran falls to it, the cycle is over, but I believe so is Lordran. Things will fall into utter chaos if the worlds become one. Perhaps... perhaps the machine was left to us by our Creators to test us. To see if we could truly stand against utter annihilation... and survive."

Quelana's head spun with the dragon's words. It was almost too much to comprehend. She looked to Lautrec. He was silent, staring pensively down at his own feet. Quelana took his hand and rubbed at it while she thought, and after a long moment of quiet, said, "So we have to stop Logan. That much is clear. But... how?" She considered it. "Solaire... Abby believed Solaire was the son of Gwyn. Was she right?"

"Yes."

"And if Abby is control and Ben is chaos... what does that make Solaire? Can he light the flames?"

"I believe he can. I believe, in fact, that any descendants of the old bloodlines could do it." The dragons eyes narrowed upon her. "Even you, little witch."

"Me?"  
"Your mother was the great witch of Izalith. Her blood flows in you as

Gwyn's blood flows in Solaire. Why not? The mother of pyromancy becomes the mother of the world. Sounds fitting in a way, doesn't it?"

"Whoever lights the flames," Lautrec began at once, "Is sacrificed to them..."

"They are."  
Lautrec spun on her. "It's not an option then."

She might've disagreed, but that intensity had creeped back into his eyes, and under its penetrating stare, Quelana could only nod her head.

"If the flames are lit by Solaire or yourself, little witch, and not the Chosen, the cycle is broken, the darkness is staved off, and Lordran enters a new era... what that era is, I am not sure, but it will not be the end any longer. Things will simply pass on to something new, as all things one day do."

"Something new," Quelana muttered. "That's it then. We have to stop Logan and ensure Solaire or myself makes it to the Kiln to-"

"You're not doing it," Lautrec interjected. "Let Solaire give his life for this damned world, not you. He's the one who's been going on about 'sacrificing himself' all this time. Let him get his wish granted. Quelana, I'm not letting you give your life away."

"Letting me?" Quelana echoed.

Lautrec held her eyes. "I... I can't lose you."

"Who does Lordran belong to?"

They both turned back to the dragon. It was Lautrec who asked, "What did you say?"

"You wield a great power within you, Lautrec of Carim. A power even some of the mightiest 'Gods' that have roamed this world of ours have not had. And soon enough, that power will be called upon. It may be the sons of Gods and the daughters of witches and the two Chosen with their bestowed upon gifts who will clash over Lordran's future, but it is you, human, who will decide it. For you are but a man. You have no destiny. No fate. No chains guiding your hands or steering your feet. You have no gift, no power, no true purpose. And in that remarkably unremarkable existence, you wield the power of choice. You act because you choose to, and before this is all over... it would not surprise me if your decision is the one that matters when Lordran faces its final moment.

"So ask yourself in that moment, human: Who does Lordran belong to? When you have the answer... you know your choice will be true."

Lautrec stared at the dragon. "Choice? There's no choice here for me. I can't lose Quelana, and I certainly wouldn't ever side with Logan and whatever chaotic darkness he'd bring about into the world. Choice... I'll give it to you now: I choose Solaire. Let the knight finally find his 'Sun' he's been worshipping over. Let him find it in the flames."

The dragon groaned and shifted a bit in his bedding of ash and branches. "Something I've learned about your kind, human, over all this time watching you is that you can bloody and batter your bodies till your skin turns to iron, and you can seal away your emotions and empathy for one another until your heart becomes stone, but your mind... a man's mind will always be paper. It will bend and flex and can become wrapped around something. It will shrink away from a fire and tremble in a cold wind, and if you know just the right way to twist it, it can be turned into something entirely new... and what a man detests one moment, he may desire the next."

The two, for a moment, stared defiantly into one another's eyes-man and dragon-and Quelana actually thought Lautrec might move for attack. Preemptively, she slipped between them, laid her hands on Lautrec's shoulders, and began guiding him backwards. "I think it's time to leave."

He halted her and shook his head before leaning around to face the dragon once again. "Answer me this last question, dragon."

"I will do so to the best of my ability."

"Her sisters," he began, nodding to Quelana, "built her a boat, and her eldest told me it would be possible to sail out on Lordran's great ocean into the fog that wraps it. She said that the fog was truly a fog gate, and that by crossing it... Lordran could be escaped. Truly escaped."

"Unfortunately, human, my knowledge is limited to the confines of our world, not what lies beyond it, but I will tell you this: I've seen a small number of beings cross that final wall of fog that rests at the edge of our world... none have ever returned in a cycle. They were simply gone."

"...gone," Lautrec muttered. "Are you telling me we could just... be 'gone'?"

"If that is what you choose. Of course, where you will be gone to, is a mystery known only to those who've made the journey themselves. Perhaps there is nothing."

"Perhaps there is everything," Lautrec retorted.  
"Such is the nature of the unknown," the dragon admitted.

That anger was swelling in Lautrec's eyes again and Quelana pushed a bit harder on his shoulders to get him moving once more.

"A final piece of advice before we part ways, human," the dragon's voice

called after them. "Regardless of who lights the flames, don't be there when they do. You are but a man, and man was not meant to look upon the fires that fuel the world. The flames require sacrifice, and if you happen to be in the Kiln when they are lit... you will be sacrificed permanently. No returning in a cycle, no returning in the new world, no returning in a dark world. You will be gone forever, so, for your sake, don't be there."

Lautrec fixed the dragon with a shrewd look. "Am I to believe this? Why would you help me?"

"I've watched you for a long time," the dragon answered. "And I've taken a liking to you. I've watched you choose... and I watched you forgive your sister after a lifetime of hatred. I have a tenderness in my old ancient, eternal, heart for forgiveness. It brought me great joy to witness. In the end, human, it may even be the thing that saves your soul from damnation. So heed my warning."

Lautrec looked as if he were going to turn away and finally succumb to Quelana's shoving, but then he snapped his head back to the dragon and shouted, "Where do you go when you die?"

The dragon's voice was starting to grow distant by the time it answered, but the words were clear enough: "I imagine you might find that answer before the end as well. Farewell, human. Farewell, little witch." And finally, after they'd already taken the curve that twisted out of the dragon's domain: "Who does Lordran belong to?"

-o-o-o-

They set up a makeshift 'camp' beneath the mounded sand that formed into a curving wall beside the shoreline and served as a bit of shelter from the winds. Lautrec had gathered dry branches from one of the large, hollowed-out, trunks, and after they were bundled together in a circle of stone upon the sand, Quelana set them alight with her pyromancy. They sat before the fire, gathering some much needed rest, and watching the tide come in and out, reaching for their feet. Neither spoke for some time; Quelana assumed there was just too much to think about and consider to dilute with words. She watched the fires burn and crackle the wood, consuming it to give them heat and light, and could not help but draw the analogy to the flames at the Kiln. They too had to be fed to provide Lordran... but their fuel was life.

She turned to face Lautrec, but it was his shadow that caught her eye. The fire was casting it back onto the wall of sand and the gentle winds were sending it into a wild dance. She craned her neck further around and glimpsed he own shadow as well. That's truly all we are, she mused. Two shadows on a wall.

"Whatever happens in the coming days," Lautrec's voice broke the silence

and he turned to her and took hold of her hand. "Swear to me, Quelana. Swear to me if it comes down to it... you won't sacrifice yourself."

She held his eyes. "I swear it," she lied. She'd been thinking on it since they reached the shore again. If there was no other way... what more could she do? Lordran was more important than her. And Lautrec... she cared very much for him, but Lordran was bigger than him, too.

"Quelana..." he began, clearly not convinced by her lie.

Instead of answering, she moved closer to him and cupped his chin in her hands. "Lordran has to be saved, Lautrec. It has to be. At any cost."

"We can leave," he pleaded. "You heard the dragon. I can get you on that boat like I promised your sister I would and we can just... go. We can be gone from this world and-"

She leaned in and kissed his lips.

When she pulled away, Lautrec wore an expression of surprise for only a moment before he reached for her face, leaned forth, and kissed her in return. Her fingers found the straps of his armor and popped the buckles, and Lautrec slid out of it at once. His hands moved to her cheeks, her chin, her hair, her back. His arms wrapped her and tightened and their lips found one another's once again.

"Please don't leave me," he whispered; his breath a warm trickle against her ear as he pressed his face against hers.

I won't, she thought, reaching for the hem of her robes to lift them away over her head. Not now. For now, I am yours and you are mine and nothing else matters. And Lordran... it will wait till the morrow.

As she pushed him to the sands and crawled atop him, her eyes returned briefly to their shadows on the sand wall; shadows that had started so far apart and despite everything that had stood between them... had found one another at last.

The shadows joined as one and did not come apart for quite some time. The tides came in and out, and for one, fleeting, moment at least, everything in the world was alright.

Chapter 63

Author's Final Note: Well, we've made it, everyone. There is only one chapter and an epilogue left after this, and I don't want to stick one of these notes in either one of them for pacing and atmosphere reasons, so this will be my final say on things. It has been a long, long, journey getting here, but I am happy to say the end is finally in sight! I would be remiss if I didn't use this final note to give thanks one last time to everyone who has stuck with the story and offered your kind words of support. Over the last nine months of writing this giant thing, it has been a constant bright spot in my week logging in to read your messages and reviews and you all have my sincere gratitude for that. I will miss it dearly.

This story (though I maybe didn't realize it at first) has been one, long, love letter. A love letter to From Software for creating this incredible game the story is based on. A love letter to Dark Souls itself, of course. And a love letter to the absolutely incredible community that has sprung up around the game and one that I can now say I'm a proud member of with my little tale here. I do not speak in hyperbole when I say I believe it's one of the best game communities I can think of, and I am absolutely honored to have this small, small, part in it.

More than anything, though, I think I will miss writing about these characters I've gotten to know so well over the last year. They feel like old friends of mine that I'm about to have to let go, so... I hope you'll stick around for these last two chapters, and we can say goodbye to them together.

signing off with sincere gratitude, -seeker

Standing behind the waist-high barrier that wrapped the Altar of Sunlight's outer garden in a line of moss and vine-littered parapets, Solaire could see the sun trying to rise in the East. It was not succeeding. The storm had been battling it every day since the Archives fell for dominancy over the skies, and on that morning, Solaire thought the winner was clear. The storm has won, he thought, sweeping his gaze South to the mass of purple clouds swirling in a queer oval around the Firelink Shrine. The storm has won and the Sun has lost, and now we stand at the cusp of the final battle for Lordran's future in darkness. The thought unnerved him, and Solaire had to pry his eyes from the foreboding sight to find his courage again. He sighed, turned, and was about to head back inside when his eyes fell to another ominous sight: the stone boots of Lordran's God of War. They were the only thing left of the statue that once stood tall and proud over the Altar. And now even the boots are turning to ruin... as all things one day do, I suppose.

Out of the morning rains and beneath the Altar's protective stone keep, Solaire returned to face each of his companions in turn. Around the bonfire, Rickert and Lady Rhea sat in one another's embrace. Tarkus was seated opposed to them, running his greatsword over a whetstone and listening to Rickert tell a story about stealing bread from a kitchen only to find it had been stale. At the story's conclusion, Tarkus laughed, but Rhea only fixed Rickert with that reproachful look she often wore when the young man's tales turned cruder than she preferred.

Both Petrus and Patches were seated further back against the wall beyond the room's central fountain. Petrus was shifting through what little supplies they had, likely in search of food. The man ate much and often, and it showed in his rather plump figure. If he was concerned with the task that lay before them as Solaire was, it did not show. Patches, on the other hand-their newest recruit-looked far different than the man Solaire had come to know briefly at the Parish chapel. The 'Hyena' as they called him did not smile or laugh or even sneer as he seemed so wont to do in their previous encounters. He only cradled his knees and stared forth into nothing; a pensive look wrinkling the brow beneath his bald head.

Priscilla was gone. Solaire had sent her to fly high into the Parish buildings and keep vigilance over the goings-on at the Firelink Shrine. They knew Logan was there, the crossbreed had reported as much after the first scouting journey Solaire had sent her on, and they knew the Darkwraiths roamed the surrounding lands like a black plague that had taken hold of the earth. Beyond that, though, they knew little else, and Solaire could only hope that when the crossbreed returned, she returned bearing news of use.

Just outside the Altar the Dragonslayer stood guard at their end of the bridge connecting the Parish with the Burg; his long spear in hand. The rains were beating down upon his lion's helm, playing a quiet song of water against metal, but the Dragonslayer did not seemed concerned. He only stood; as silent and inscrutable as ever. Solaire looked from him to the rest of them and noticed Abby was missing, but he did not need ask where she'd gone missing to. She'd likely went to the same place she'd gone the day before, and thinking on it then, Solaire decided he'd go to meet her. First, though, he wanted a word with the Dragonslayer, and so he stepped onto the bridge and into the rains to join at the tall knight's side.

"Have you been out here all night?"

The only sign that Ornstein had heard him at all was a slight tilt of the lion's helm in his direction. "Yes, my Lord."

"Anything?"

"No, my Lord." He fixed the eyeslits of his helm on the bridge and nodded. "The Darkwraiths are wise not to attack here. Their superior

numbers mean nothing on a bridge this narrow. If they were to strike... I would kill them."

Solaire wasn't sure if even the Dragonslayer could slay an army of wraiths on his own, but he appreciated the confidence all the same. He only wished he shared it.

They stood there awhile in the quiet of one another's company. Solaire's gaze found its way back to that mass of ominous clouds over the Shrine and realized there wouldn't be many more opportunities to speak with the Dragonslayer before... well, before the end. He asked a question that had been surfacing repeatedly in his mind since they'd met. "What was he like?"

Ornstein faced him.

"Gwyn, that is. My... my father." The word felt strange leaving his lips, and Solaire winced when it hit his ears. Even after knowing for all that time, he hadn't gotten used to the notion that he was the son of the Lord of Sunlight.

Ornstein held his eyes a moment before turning back to the bridge. He stared without speaking for a long moment. When his voice finally came, it came with reverence and tenderness. "Lord Gwyn was the greatest warrior I'd ever had the honor of looking upon. All you see before you," he swept the tip of his spear across the Burg and the mountains in the East, "was pried from the talons of the dragons that stalked these lands before Gwyn came and waged war upon them. They call me the Dragonslayer, but if the scholars and historians only knew how many of those wretched beasts your father had slain... it would be him with the title, not I."

Solaire stood a moment, taking in the knight's words. He looked East and imagined Gwyn as the artists' renditions so often depicted him on the horizon: a giant amongst men, battling off the dragons with two fists full of conjured lightning spears. "Was he wise?"

"A more brilliant mind sat in the your father's head than any human mind could ever dream of," he said, the word 'human' dripping with his contempt. "Lord Gwyn was as wise as he was courageous."

Solaire shook his head. "I don't understand, Ornstein. What happened? What could the humans have possibly done to awaken such profound hatred to turn him against them so vehemently?"

Ornstein faced him again. "Your father merely saw what humans were capable of. He watched them build up kingdoms from the ashes of the battlefield that He himself won. He watched as they squabbled and bickered and warred against one another over gold and lands and women and a dozen other foolish things that a foolish human so foolishly desires." The Dragonslayer stepped closer so that the sneering snout of the lion on

his helm roared soundlessly in Solaire's face. "Your father saw, my Lord. He saw what darkness lurks in the heart of every man. Greed... he saw greed, my Lord."

"And did he turn a blind eye to everything else that lies in the heart of man?" Solaire retorted. "Kindness and courage and ingenuity and cunning and... and hope. Did he not see those thing as well, or did he simply blind himself so that his hatred could swell unabated by the truth?"

Ornstein shrugged. "It didn't matter. Greed, my Lord. It will always come back to greed with their kind." He cast a look into the Altar at their rear. "If you put your trust in those humans you love so dearly long enough... you will see, my Lord. I only hope that when the time of their betrayal comes... it does not cost your everything."

"And what of your loyalty, Knight Ornstein," Solaire asked. "If we both end up in the Kiln before my father-your former Lord-where does your loyalty lie then?"

Ornstein stared at him. Rain beat down on his helm sending water to drip from the lion's fangs. "Your father was only my Lord when he was the Lord of Sunlight. He holds that title no longer. Now he is the Lord of Cinder, and you are the Lord of Sunlight. My allegiance... is at your side. Until the end."

"Then I will hear no more about greed or betrayal."

Ornstein bowed. "As you wish, my Lord."

"I'll prove Gwyn wrong soon enough," Solaire said, turning to head back inside. "When I lead a group of humans against the wraiths and the destruction Lordran now faces. I will lead them into battle... and we will win."

"Yes, lead them into battle," Ornstein said without turning to watching him go. "Lead them against the human sorcerer who controls the wraiths... the human who has sacrificed everything and anything to get himself into a position of power so that he could acquire more... As humans always have. And always will."

Solaire halted and spun back on the knight. Ornstein had become statuesque in his guard of the bridge again, and for a moment Solaire debated returning to argue. After consideration, however, he realized they could go on all day and likely not see eye-to-eye on the matter, and he had other plans to attend to, and so Solaire left the company of the Dragonslayer and set about attending to them.

The path back to the chapel they'd all once called 'home' for that brief moment of peace and rest they'd been afforded after the fall of the Archives was, thankfully, a short one. Solaire traveled it alone, and surveyed the crumbling buildings that flanked the Parish streets as he

went. He saw windows that hadn't been affixed with panes of glass since as far back as he could remember. He saw shattered bits of stone pooled beneath warped, wooden, doors that no longer held purpose with nothing outside to keep away, and nothing inside to keep safe. He saw banners hanging from the ledges of roofs that had once boasted the pride of Lordran's knights and warriors, and now were only faded, tattered, reminders that the world had long since decayed, and there were no heroes left to it to celebrate.

If Lordran is saved, he thought, avoiding lifting his gaze any further and catching a glimpse of that cold, grey, sky that stretched its bleak canvas relentlessly overhead. How long will it take to rebuild? How long before the streets are filled with the laughter of children instead of the sobs of madmen. How long before the Sun awakens the plants and flowers and trees from their long and bitter slumber? How long before the hollow thing the world has become is forgotten... and the wonderful thing it might one day be rises in its place?

They were questions he did not have answers to, and he'd long since learned pondering on questions like those long enough only served to steal your hopes. He cast them aside, lowered his head, and pressed on the rest of the way with his eyes on his boots.

When he'd made the short journey and ascended the last climb of stairs that rose to meet the burned, blackened, husk that had once been the Parish church, he found Abby huddled up in a heavy cloak with the hood pulled up sitting on the church stairs. His boots scraping stone pulled her eyes to him and the look of surprise on her face was brief; her smile, that shone like sunlight even in the darkest of days, replaced it immediately.

"Solaire," she greeted, rising to open her arms and take him in her embrace.

"My Lady." He gave her a little squeeze before releasing her.

"What are you doing up here?"

"I'd ask you the same thing, Abby." He sent a quick sweep of his eyes over the surrounding buildings. "There are wraiths still prowling Lordran. Even if Priscilla is keeping watch over them, you never know if one could sneak through. They are... insidious things, those wraiths."

The young woman before him nodded, but the girlish defiance was plain enough to see in the pretty blue wells of her eyes. Solaire chuckled and shook his head. "I don't suppose you'll be coming back with me, though, will you?"

Abby's smile turned wan. "I can't, Solaire. Not yet. You understand... don't you?"

He took a breath before forcing the words from his mouth he knew the

young woman did not want to hear. "Abby... it's been a long time now since Lautrec and Quelana left for Izalith. If they haven't returned yet... My lady, it's likely they're not going to return at all."

"One more day, Solaire. Please," she pleaded, taking his hand and squeezing. "Just give them one more day before sending that Dragonslayer into Izalith after the soul shard. They're alive. I can't tell you how I know it, I just... I just do. If they come back looking for us and find only the burned remains of the church, they won't know what happened. I have to wait here. I have to."

Solaire held that pleading look of hers and sighed. Someone had once told him there were far fewer things in the world as stubborn as a knight with his honor intact. Standing before Abby then, he thought maybe he'd found at least one: a young woman with her heart set on something. "Alright, Abby. Alright." The exuberance returned to her smile and Solaire gestured to the steps. "Is there room for an old knight to rest his legs there beside you for a short while?"

She laughed and stepped aside so he could join her. "Absolutely."

He took her hand and the two of them plopped themselves down on the damp stone stairs that sat between flanking pillars of blackened and cracked wood. Once, they'd been the entrance to the church. Now, they only served as another reminder that the world was a cruel and uncertain place, and what could be a beacon of hope one moment could just as easily be an omen of despair the next.

The two of them sat in silence for awhile. Solaire found the pattering of rain on stone to be quite calming in truth, and was in no hurry to rob the scene of its serenity.

It was Abby who broke the quiet after a long bout of it. "Are you afraid, Solaire?"

"My lady?"

"Afraid of... I don't know. Anything? Logan? The wraiths? Gwyn? The... the end?"

He considered it. "I'm not sure. I'm an old knight, Abby. Old knight's are used to burying their fears. Fear is a soldier's worst enemy on the battlefield. Fear births panic and panic means death. I imagine a fear still dwell somewhere in me, but..." He faced her. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm not afraid," she said, her eyes narrowing into the horizon as her expression turned steely. "I can't explain why, Solaire, but... I'm not really afraid of anything we might face anymore. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I believe I' m ready for the end. I can't explain it any better than that.'

Solaire nodded. "That's a good thing, my lady. Courage within you instills courage around you."

She narrowed her eyes on the horizon. "I don't think I'll live."

"Abby, don't talk like that. You don't know that. It doesn't have to be that way."

She faced him and a sly grin curled her lip. "Someone once told me that all things must be the way they are... or else they would not be at all."

He could not help but return the grin. "Oh? They sound like wise words, my lady. I'd listen often to the knight who said them."

"Who said it was a knight?"

He chuckled. "Just a guess."

She stared at him. "I'm not afraid to die, you know," she said, then after a quiet and thoughtful moment, asked, "What is happiness for you, Solaire?"

"Happiness?" He looked to the horizon and mulled it over. "I suppose my happiest moments have all been beneath the Sun's golden rays and warm embrace my lady. When I was a younger man, I used to love setting out on a morning's journey with my fellow knights and friends, waking with the Sun, heading out to find adventure." He felt a wistful smile take his face. "There are not many things in life as wonderous as a few bouts of... jolly cooperation." He turned on her with a chuckle. "And what about you, Abby? Where is your happiness?"

She looked to her hands and Solaire saw them picking at one another fastidiously. "I'll be happy when this is over," she said. "That's all. I just... I just want Logan and the wraiths and this storm... I want it all to be over, Solaire. If I can live to see that moment, that would be enough for me."

He took her hand and raised it to his lips to kiss. "Then you have my solemn oath, my lady, that that is what you shall have. I will put an end to the mad sorcerer. And you will live-not only to see it-but on to Lordran's new era as well. I promise."

"Thank you, Solaire. You are a kind man and a brave knight and Lordran could not hope for a better leader to face this final battle." She leaned over to kiss his cheek. "Praise the Sun."

"Praise the Sun, Abby." And let it shine again to wash away the dark before we make our last stand.

They leaned against one another and went quiet again for some time as morning passed to noon and the rains came harder as the storm overhead raged on. Thunder grumbled and lightning crackled to the South and Solaire swore he had seen the edges of the bolt tinged a faint blue, but

that made little sense, and he figured it had been his imagination.

"Oh," Abby said so suddenly into the quiet, he pulled back from her. "Sorry, Solaire, I just-" She began patting down the folds and pockets of the heavy cloak she wore, sticking her hands in every nook and cranny of the cloth. "Oh, I hope I didn't lose it."

"Lost what, my lady?"

"I had something for Lautrec," she explained, double checking the cloak's pockets. "A piece of paper."

"A piece of paper?"

"It was a note he'd given to Anastacia. When... when Ben murdered her, she'd been holding onto it and I think maybe drawing strength from it. I took it and hid it away in my small clothes before Ben and Logan brought me to the cemetery. It should be here somewhere. If I lost it... oh, that would be terrible. I wanted to give it to Lautrec and let him know how much it'd meant to Ana."

"Well I'm sure it will turn up, Abby," Solaire assured her. "Most important things do."

"Yes. I hope you're right. I-" Her eyes moved over his shoulder and her mouth gaped. She rose slowly to her feet, stared a moment nonplussed, and then erupted into a cheer.

Solaire rose himself and turned to face whatever sight had filled her with such vivacious joy. When he found it, he could not help but smile himself as a surge of hope coursed within him.

For Lautrec and Quelana had returned.

Abby flew past his shoulder, barreled right up to Quelana-who had pulled back her hood to fix the girl with a rheumy-eyed smile herself-and threw her arms around the witch. Quelana stumbled a bit but caught herself, laughed, and returned the embrace. "I knew it!" Abby's words came half- muffled against Quelana's robes as she squeezed herself tightly to her friend. "I just knew it! I knew you were alive! I knew you'd return to us!"

Quelana closed her eyes and hugged the young woman in her arms. "We're alive, Abby. And I've missed you dearly."

Lautrec was moving forth slower than the witch, and Solaire glimpsed him limping a bit on his left leg. Quelana looked more or less the same as when she'd departed, pale and pretty, but the knight of Carim looked to have taken a few more bumps and bruises than he would have liked. His golden armor was nicked and dented and hung loose around his slimming frame. His face was solemn and lightly bearded, and when his grey eyes found Solaire's, the usual hardness was there, but there was something

else as well. A fatigue, perhaps. Solaire moved to him, nodded, and extended his hand. Lautrec eyed it, wrapped an arm over his ribcage, and shook, though even that gesture looked to pain him.

"Welcome back," Solaire greeted.

Lautrec nodded. "Yeah."

It appeared to be a focused effort for Abby to pry herself from Quelana long enough to move to Lautrec. The two found each other's eyes and Abby looked tentative for only a moment before stepping forth and hugging the knight of Carim just as tightly as she had Quelana. Lautrec sighed, but opened his arm and allowed her embrace on him, though Solaire saw again that when she squeezed, he winced.

What happened down there in Izalith? He pondered.

"Knight Solaire," Quelana greeted, stepping forth.

"My lady." He bowed. When he straightened again, however, Quelana's arms were extended out before her, her hands cupped around a glowing, golden, ball of light. Solaire stared at it only long enough to realize what it was and his smile widened. "Very good, Quelana. The Lord Soul shard. I should not have expected any less of a success from a witch as powerful and wise as you."

"You're kind to say so, Solaire, but there is... much to discuss." Quelana's look darkened and she reached back for Lautrec's hand. The knight took it and the two came together. "We've learned of some terrible revelations. I'm not sure which you know and which you don't, but I believe it would be wise to pool our information as soon as possible."

"Of course, my lady. On that we agree." He looked South. Over the tops of the Parish buildings, that swirl of purple clouds was darkening as noon began to fade to night. "We've made camp at the Altar of Sunlight further along the road. The rest of our fellowship is there."

"Is it safe?" Quelana asked; always one for caution.

Solaire sighed. "My lady, there are no holds left in Lordran that I'd feel comfortable deeming 'safe', but... it is as safe a place as we have for the moment."

She pressed her lips together and forced a nod. It was clearly not the answer she was looking for. She turned to Lautrec. He took her in one arm and pressed his brow to hers and Solaire saw an expression of comfort wash across Quelana immediately. Whatever happened in Izalith, Solaire mused, has drawn the two of them much closer together. That is a good thing. We will need unity in this final stand against Logan more than anything.

He spotted Abby watching the two of them as well with, perhaps, the same realization dawning upon her. For a brief, fleeting, moment she looked a bit hurt, but it wasn't long before the hurt turned to a sincere smile. The girl once-and perhaps still-may have held some affection for the knight of Carim, but in that moment, Solaire saw a woman's grace and a friend's approval, and he could not be more proud of the young woman. Abby moved to Quelana's side and slipped beneath her waiting arm.

"I want to know everything," Abby told her.

Quelana squeezed her shoulder. "That's quite a lot to know, Abby, don't you think?"

"Yes," the young woman admitted. "But I want to know it all the same."

The two shared a smile that broke to laughter.

"Come, my ladies," Solaire interjected. "And let us be out of these rains and around the warmth of a fire. There is much for all of us to know." He turned to see Lautrec's stare was held on the clouds in the South. The knight of Carim fixed them with an apprehensive glare and tightened his arm around Quelana. When he looked to Solaire, Solaire said, "Alright, Lautrec?"

Lautrec nodded, and they headed back for the Altar at once.

-o-o-o-

Night came on the lands quick in those dark days of Lordran, and by the time their party had merged with the other waiting around the crackling, orange, flames of the altar's bonfire, the sky had already turned to a sheet of inky black; lit only on occasion by a seam of lightning that revealed the horde of swollen and sickly clouds that littered its belly. The rains on that night were particularly fierce, and when Solaire stepped beneath the stone ceiling of the Altar, he was thankful at once for the relief of their poundings on his head and shoulders.

It was Rhea who spoke fist, jolting up from Rickert's arms so suddenly, the young man tumbled back on his ass. "Lady Quelana!" She cheered in greet and rushed to take hold of the witch. Rickert wasn't far behind her, laughing the whole way as he patted Quelana on the shoulder and offered her his toothy grin. When Tarkus found her, he wrapped her up in his tree-trunk arms and Solaire actually feared he might crush the poor witch. The man could be as tender as he was tenacious, however, and set Quelana back down before long to bow reverently before her and kiss at her hand. Even Patches, sitting quietly in the shadows against the wall at the back of the altar, seemed somewhat relieved to see the witch back in their company, though he did not move to greet her.

Each of them-rightfully so, Solaire thought-seemed to hold some affection or endearment for Quelana. Lautrec, however, did not receive

the same warm welcome. They eyed him and a few offered a curt nod of recognition, but the knight had not made many friends, and no greetings were exchanged verbally. He simply shuffled around Quelana to the room's central fountain-Solaire noting the brief and dark exchange that took place in the eyes of the knight of Carim and Patches-and seated himself to keep watch over the witch.

When the greetings and chatter tapered off-and that was not for quite some time; both Abby and Rickert were exuberantly hounding after Quelana to tell them every last detail of her journey-and the room grew quiet once again, Solaire was readying to begin what he believed might be their final meeting when the looming figure of the Dragonslayer appeared beneath the bridge's archway.

All eyes turned Ornstein's way, but the knight's helm was affixed on Quelana alone.

Lautrec rose, unsheathed his shotels, and moved around to step before Quelana protectively.

Ornstein did not appear particularly concerned with the gold-armored knight staring balefully up at him. The Dragonslayer simply lowered to one knee and bowed his head. "Daughter of Chaos, it is an honor to meet you."

Quelana began stepping around Lautrec until he hooked his arm back and pinned her in place. Quelana narrowed her eyes over his shoulder on the kneeling Dragonslayer before them and frowned. "You know me?"

"My Lord-" Ornstein halted, looked briefly to Solaire, and corrected himself, "My former Lord was Lord Gwyn. He and your mother were good allies once in the war against the dragons. We heard much of the Great Wtich's daughters' beauty. I am pleased I've gotten to look upon it now at least once before the end."

The end, Solaire thought. Even the Dragonslayer believes us to be at our end.

"I see," Quelana said. "You need not kneel before me then."

Ornstein looked to Solaire for approval. Solaire gave it and the Dragonslayer rose, bowed, and returned to his post at the bridge. Outside, thunder grumbled and a fresh torrent of rain clawed its way into the altar to slap against what stone it could find.

Quelana wrestled free from Lautrec's hold, the two shared a brief look that was entirely inscrutable to Solaire, and made their way to the fountain. Lautrec sat, Quelana waited before gently lowering herself between his legs, and the knight draped his arms around her, then everyone else settled in around the quietness of the fire and the storm and Solaire stepped before them.

He looked to each of their faces in turn. This is it, he realized. The final force humanity and the light have left to combat against Logan and his darkness. Another thought surfaced in his mind before he could silence it: But is it enough?

"Anastacia has passed away, Lautrec" he told the knight, getting that uncomfortable order of business out of the way first. "At the hands of young Benjamin and the mad sorcerer Logan."

"I know," Lautrec said.

"You... know?"

"Might be we should let the witch 'n her knight tell their tale 'fore we go any further," Rickert suggested. "Sounds to me like they've had quite the adventure down there in old Izalith."

"I'll second that," Rhea agreed.

"Yes," Abby added, folding onto her knees beside Quelana's legs so that the witch's slender fingers could run in her hair. "Tell us, Quelana."

Quelana looked to Solaire. He nodded. She told them.

It was a tale that spanned from their departure of the church to their arrival back at its doorstep, and in between were stories of an obsessed and mad Laurentius stalking along behind them to capture Lady Quelana for himself; of fierce, frozen, beasts that Lautrec had slain in the Demon Ruins; of a frozen tundra that had taken the place of the lava-covered lands that Lost Izalith had once been; of Quelana's own demise in a bed of icy water and of her resurrection at the hands of a trio of sisters who, apparently, loved her deeply enough to sacrifice their lives to see her return. The tale concluded with their meeting of a great and eternal dragon in the mysterious lands of the Great Hollow below Lordran, and of the wealth of information he'd provided them with.

When the witch's lips finally rested, no one spoke for quite some time. Every one of them wore matching expressions of pensive incredulity, and Solaire imagined his own look was not much different; it had been quite the tale. "Logan will bring about the end of all things then," he said, the first to break the eerie silence that had draped the altar's interior and pulled every eye to his own. "If the Everlasting Dragon is to be believed... Logan and his mad ambitions will finally do Lordran in if he succeeds. That other world we glimpsed in the sorcerer's machine... it will collide with ours and all will fall to darkness and chaos."

Quelana nodded. "Yes. I believe so."

It was Abby who wore, perhaps, the most perplexed expression. "Ben and I are opposites? And... our gifts were bestowed by the Gods to further enforce our difference? I don't understand. Quelana... what does that

makeme?"

Quelana reached for the young woman at her knees and stroked at her cheek. "It doesn't make you anything, Abby. Who you are and your actions define you. Not some 'gift of the Gods'."

"I'm order and Ben is disorder..." Abby muttered, staring blankly to the floor. "What does that mean?"

"If I got the right of it," Rickert interjected, "It sounds like you'd give us this cycle thing we're apparently all trapped in, Abby, and Ben 'n Logan... well, they're the chaos that's looking to plunge the world into a big pile of wyvern shit." He turned his grin on Quelana, ignoring Rhea's slap at his arm. "That about the right of it, witch?"

"In... words of your own, Rickert, yes. I suppose that's the right of it."

Rickert opened his mouth, but Rhea pinched at his arm till he shut it again and spoke in his place, "Father Eternal... it was as Nico once believed. He is Lordran's great keeper of wisdom and virtue." Her comely face wrinkled as she bit at her lip. "And the dragon said Solaire could light the flames of the Kiln? Solaire could really, well, he could be... well, the-"

"The Savior of Lordran!" Rickert finished, throwing his hands up in a grandiose gesture. "Solaire old friend, I never doubted ya for a second! You keep that in mind when you're building up your new kingdom and looking to fill out those kingly chairs at your side when-" This time it was Tarkus who gave Rickert a punch to silence him. "Hey! What's the deal, Cradlebreaker!?"

Tarkus' expression was uncharacteristically grave as he spoke. "There won't be any 'kingdom-building' for Solaire, you fool. If he lights the flames... he sacrifices himself to them."

That somber look Tarkus wore passed to Rickert at once. "Oh, right... Solaire, Gods, I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about, Rickert" Solaire replied with a smile. His eyes found Abby's and gave a wink. "I'm not afraid of the end. If it is the way of things, then it's the way of things. And all things must be the way they are... or else they would not be at all."

Abby returned the smile.

Tarkus was, clearly, not going to be so easily conciliated. He rose to his feet, towering over the room in his black iron armor, and began pacing the length of the far wall. "There has to be some other way. Some way you can go on living, Solaire. There has to be."

"The flames require sacrifice," Quelana explained. "The dragon said as much."

"Well let's toss that mad bastard sorcerer in 'em, then!" Tarkus growled. "Let that bastard be the 'sacrifice'!"

"Tarkus," Solaire began calmly as he approached his friend.

Tarkus shook his head. "No, Solaire. It ain't right! You've already fought yer damn ass off! You've given this world and its people everything! Why should you have to now give 'em the last thing you got left?"

"My friend, it is just the way of things," Solaire said, reaching for Tarkus' arm before the big man pulled it away. "I've believed it in my heart since the beginning, and now hearing Lady Quelana tell of the dragon's words... I know it to be more true than anything. I was meant for those flames, Tarkus. Gwyn... he is my father. And now it is time for the father to step down and the son to take his place... and for Lordran to move on to a new era."

"But you'll die! And that- that ain't right, Solaire! Not after all you've done for everyone! You... you shouldn't have to die."

"Then keep me alive, my friend," Solaire said, reaching for Tarkus' breast plate right above the heart and tapping at it. "Keep me alive in here and I'll be around long after my body has left the world."

Tarkus held his eyes and for a brief moment, Solaire thought he was going to hit him. Then, instead, he hugged him. The big man's arms were like heavy coils of steel wrapping his shoulders and Solaire was helpless but to smile and wait for Tarkus to release him. When he did, Solaire saw the man's eyes were rheumy and he swiped at his nose. "You're my brother, Solaire. But I suppose you're my Lord now, too. If your command is to march you down to the Kiln to slay your father and sacrifice yourself to the flames... then I'll obey it. But it doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Fair enough, my friend," Solaire told him with a pat on his shoulder. "Fair enough."

"Not quite that easy though, is it?" Rickert's voice pulled their attention back to the group gathered around the bonfire. "We only got two of them Lord Soul things."

Abby added: "And Logan holds the other two. And now he stands between us and the Kiln with an army of Darkwraiths."

"And he's no mere man," Petrus voiced from the back of the room. "I told you all as much. He stole Griggs' skin like some... some damned demon."

"I watched Lautrec bury a shotel in the sorcerer's throat," Abby went on. "And then watched Patches run a blade across it. I myself even tried killing him by stabbing him repeatedly in the back with a dagger. It did nothing. Every time he is stricken down... somehow the man rises again to do something even more terrible than before."

"So what are we saying here?" Rickert asked. "That the man is somehow bloody immortal? How are we supposed to defeat somethin' we can't kill?"

A quiet hung in the room a moment before Quelana filled it. "Priscilla said Logan had become obsessed with immortality. Besides crafting that infernal machine of his, apparently all of his focus was on how to achieve the dragon's eternal life."

"Right," Solaire began. "The crossbreed told me as much as well. She said Logan had stolen her father's primordial crystal. It's why Seath was in such great pain when we came upon him."

Quelana nodded. "And she also believed Logan was stealing her blood to inject it into his own body. What madness he was able to achieve through such a vile act, though, I do not know. Perhaps-" Her words trailed off when her eyes found Patches: slowly lurching forth out of the shadows at the rear of the altar as if awakening from a dream.

The rest of the room turned their attention on the Hyena. Patches' attention, however, was focused on the bonfire's flames; his eyes narrowed pensively; his mouth slightly agape; orange and red flickering across his pointed features.

"I think the Hyena's just now first discovering fire," Rickert jested.

"What is it, Patches?" Abby said, imploring the bald man to speak with a desperate look in her eyes. "Do you know something?"

"...crystal," he muttered with a slow shake of his head. "That bloody crystal. I'll be damned. ...and we was so close."

"Patches, please," Quelana urged the man. "If you know something-"

"Around his neck," Patches said, a sudden surge of excitement filling his expression. His eyes flittered around the room to each member of their fellowship as he tapped at his chest. "The crystal. That damned primordial crystal! The son of a bitch wears it around his bloody neck! Wears it like... like a damned necklace or something!"

Solaire's eyes met Quelana's and the two shared a hopeful-if not somewhat uncertain-look. "Are you sure, Patches?"

"More than anything," Patches said. "I seen the damned thing. He bent down once to pick something up and it slipped out of his robes and dangled there for a moment under him. I seen it. I swear. I didn't think of it as a crystal at the time, but... thinkin' back now, there's no denying it. It was a crystal. The man is wearing it around his neck. He's wearing it around his damned neck! I'd bet my life on it!"

Abby stood so sudden from beside Quelana, the witch had to pull back against Lautrec to avoid colliding with her. "He's right, Solaire!" She

shouted. "I saw Logan fiddling with something under his robes. Something oddly shaped right below his neckline. I never really thought anything of it, but..." She turned a smile from the Hyena to Quelana and finally to Solaire. "Patches is right!"

Patches beamed with pride.

"If Logan did find a way to steal Seath's immortality," Quelana began, narrowing her eyes into the flames, "then that means he needs that crystal to maintain it. If the crystal breaks..."

"Logan is mortal once more," Solaire finished with a nod of his head. "Well I'll be damned," Rickert muttered.

Rhea threw her arms up. "That's it then! We just have to shatter that crystal of his and we can defeat him!"

Petrus guffawed at the back of the room. "Doubtful. As I said, Logan is no longer just a man. He has become something more. And he's far more clever than any of us. He's not going to let one of you just walk up to him and take the thing from around his neck."

"Chubs has a point there," Rickert said. "Even if shattering that thing would turn the mad sorcerer mortal... there's just no way to get to him. He's got a bloody army of Darkwraiths."

"Well there must be a way," Quelana said.

But if there was, none of them knew it. That much was evident by the long bout of silence that filled the altar after the witch's proclamation. Tarkus paced more urgently but said nothing. Patches held his gaze on the flames a bit longer before sauntering back to the shadows with a defeated look. Rickert opened his mouth several times, but closed it back up just as many. Beside him, Rhea chewed on her lip and gave a periodical shake of her head; as if turning down a string of failed thoughts. Solaire folded his arms across his chest and looked to the Dragonslayer. The rains were beating down upon his armor. If the knight was listening or even interested in their problems, it certainly did not show.

Thunder grumbled outside and lightning flashed. Wind whistled against the ancient stone huddled up around the Altar around them. Rain played its soft song atop the roof. Still: no on had an answer.

Finally, it was Abby who spoke into the silence. "I can do it."

Solaire-with the rest of the room-turned on her. "My lady?"

Her face was solemn as she looked to Quelana and Lautrec. When she faced Solaire, it had turned almost stoic. "Logan is a man who has gone to great lengths to ensure he has no weaknesses... but he hasleft one. Me. He

wants me as his side to be his... Dark Queen." She grimaced. "If I go back to him... I can get close enough to get the crystal from him. I know it, Solaire. I'll take it and shatter it and then... then it will be up to the rest of you to slay the man, I suppose."

"We're not going to just send you willingly into Logan's possession, Abby," Solaire told her.

"No. It's too dangerous," Quelana agreed.

"There's no other way," Abby went on. "You said it yourselves. He has the Darkwraiths. They'll never allow us to get near him. Not if we go marching on the Firelink Shrine as some sort of army. But just me? One, unarmed, woman?" She pulled a deep breath and nodded. "I can do this, Solaire. I won't be able to help any other way when the fighting starts. Let me at least do this. Let me do my part."

Quelana reached for the young woman's hand and cupped it in her own but voiced no protest, and when Solaire looked to her, he saw the realization in the witch that he himself was dawning upon; a realization that stirred a great trepidation, clearly, in the both of them: Abby was right.

"As brave as that is, Abby," Rhea began, "it still doesn't solve all our problems. Even if Logan was mortal, we'd still have to get to him. And the Lord Soul shards... we'd need to somehow obtain them and get Solaire into the Kiln all while fending off the Darkwraiths. It's... it's just not possible."

"You won't need to take his souls shards," Lautrec said.

Solaire faced the knight, half-hidden behind Quelana, and raised his brow. It was the first words the man had spoken since the meeting began. Perhaps for that very reason, he had pulled the entire altar's rapt attention to him.

Lautrec ignored them and stared only at Solaire as he went on. "You won't need the shards... because you're going to send Abby off to Logan with the two we already have."

"Are you mad!?" Rhea questioned.

"Give Logan the two shards he needs to enter the Kiln?" Tarkus said. "Whose side are you on, knight?"

Even Quelana turned around in his arms to fix the man with an inquisitive look.

"Go on, Lautrec," Solaire said, halting further protest. "Surely there is more to you plan than that."

"Give Logan the shards," Lautrec continued, "and let him open up the way to the kiln. We won't ever be able to take the ones he has. Not with those wraiths guarding them. And the world, in case none of you have noticed, is failing around us. Logan will simply starve us out. He knows he can wait as the weather worsens and those tremors grow more violent and sooner or later we will get desperate. Then we have to play by his rules."

"Piss on that," Patches said.

"Alright, so Logan opens the kiln," Rhea said. "What good does that do us? He still has the wraiths to defend it."

"That's right. He does," Lautrec said. "But it will be us who has to worry about the wraiths, not Solaire, because he'll never have to face them in combat."

"What madness are you going on about?" Tarkus asked.

"There is a pair of twin shafts in that burnt husk that's left of the Parish chapel. Once, before Lordran... got sick, they functioned as lifts to and from the Firelink Shrine. They don't work anymore, but if we could fashion a rope long enough to climb down them," Lautrec's eyes held on Solaire's confidently, "we could send you in behind the whole damned army of those things so you could slip right in the back door to the Kiln. No combat. No fuss. Let Logan open the path to Gwyn... and then you just simply beat him there."

The altar was quiet as the room mulled over Lautrec's plan. When Solaire looked to the faces of their fellowship, he saw the same expression rising slowly on each of them: hope.

"Gods, that madness could actually work," Rhea said.

Abby nodded. "It will work. It's a good plan."

"Wait," Rickert began, "we'd still need a distraction for the wraiths. You can't expect them to just not notice that Solaire is sneaking in... and... well..." Realization dawned in the young man's eyes. "Oh, piss on this... we're the distraction, aren't we?"

Quelana rubbed her hands against Lautrec's as she spoke. "It's the only way."

Tarkus unsheathed his greatsword and held it before the bonfire so the flames danced in its steel surface. "Abby takes the souls to Logan. Priscilla can watch from up high to see when the bastard moves for the Kiln. When he does... we lead a strike on the Firelink Shrine against the Darkwraiths, and Solaire..." The big man faced him and smiled wistfully a moment before bellowing, "You sneak in right behind those craven knights and take down your old man! Alright! Well all-damn-right! Now that's a plan I can get behind!"

All at once, the room broke into a frenetic chatter. It seemed everyone had something to say to someone. Abby and Quelana faced one another and began speaking-the witch likely warning Abby of the dangers she'd face-and Solaire thought that the two did not look entirely dissimilar from a pair of sisters. Rickert, Rhea, and Tarkus, likewise, had launched into their own amicable argument about who would lead the charge and how they should approach the battle and the most opportune moment to strike. Both Petrus and Patches joined in, though it did not seem easy for either man to sneak a word into the trio's chattering. The only one's not talking were Ornstein, still statuesque at the bridge's archway, Lautrec, whose eyes were narrowed thoughtfully on the bonfire, and Solaire himself, who could only fight off the profound regret stirring within him that the best plan they had was not one that allowed him to fight side-by- side with his friends.

A great, deep, tremor put an end to the talking at once. It came on sudden-as the tremors that now plagued Lordran were wont to do-and so violent, the entire Altar of Sunlight rumbled and shook and rumbled some more and for one maddening moment, Solaire thought it might actually cave in on them. Then the thing trailed off and the quiet pattering of rain filled the void of silence instead, but the damage had been done: the hope and courage of their fellowship that had been coursing so greatly just moments before had fled. Lautrec had wrapped Quelana in his arm to pull her protectively to his body. Rickert and Rhea were clutching hands, staring fearfully at the ceiling as if it were a feral beast ready to pounce down on them. Petrus' jowls trembled. Patches, were he an actual hyena, would most certainly have had his tail tucked between his legs judging by the expression on his face. Ornstein had pulled his spear up a bit higher to his chest but appeared otherwise unconcerned.

Even our brief moments of hope are plagued by the reminder of the terrible threat our world faces, Solaire thought.

Abby spoke first. "We're running out of time. Lautrec's plan will work. And I'm not afraid of Logan. I'll take the soul shards to him... and I will get that crystal from around his terrible throat. I promise you all that much."

Quelana squirmed loose from Lautrec's arms to rise and wrap the young woman in her own. She pressed Abby's head to her shoulder and closed her eyes. The only sister she has left now, Solaire thought.

"Well, I don't see any other bloody way I guess," Rickert admitted. "This is it then? This is the plan?"

"This is the plan," Solaire confirmed. "Unless someone has a better one." Their silence was their answer.  
Solaire pulled a breath and nodded as he looked around the altar at his

friends-some old; some new-and said, "That's it then. Abby, you have the right of it. As we all just felt, we likely don't have much time. Would you be willing to go on the morrow?"

"Yes," she said, the word a bit muffled against Quelana's cloak, but the witch did not appear ready to release her just yet.

"Then we leave at dawn."  
"Dawn?" Rickert echoed. "As in tomorrow morning?"

Tarkus barked a fit of hearty laughter. "What's wrong there, Rick? You afraid of a few little Darkwraiths?"

For once, Rickert had no witty retort. His face paled a bit and he clutched tighter to Rhea beside him. "That's just... bloody soon is all."

"If we had more time..." Solaire began.

"We don't," Lautrec interjected.

"I still don't like it," Petrus said. "No offense, Knight Solaire, but we're putting an awful lot of ours hopes on you. We're sending you off alone to sneak around the wraiths... what if you get caught? Gods... what if you get killed? What then?"

"Then..." Terrible visions flashed before Solaire's mind. Visions of a dark Lordran with endless storms and rains and a whole other world coming to collide and clash with the unlucky inhabits that remained to it. The image was so bleak, he had to dig his thumb and forefinger into his temple and squeeze his eyelids shut tight till it passed. "I'm... I'm not sure."

"If something were to happen to Solaire, there is another option," Quelana said.

Lautrec rose to his feet at once and snatched her arm. "Quelana..."

"They deserve to know, Lautrec," she protested.

A flash of that dark, angry, thing that lived in the knight of Carim showed itself upon his face, but Quelana's eyes were soft, and as they held on Lautrec's own, they also quelled that angry beast into submission. He released her with a sigh and returned his stare, begrudgingly, to the bonfire.

"What is this 'other option', Lady Quelana?" Solaire asked.

"The dragon said the First Flame could be lit by anyone with Lord's blood flowing in their veins." She looked around the room. "That means it has to be either youSolaire... or me."

"You, Lady Quelana?"

"You are Gwyn's son. And I am the Witch of Izalith's daughter. We both carry the old blood within us."

"He could've been lying," Lautrec said at once. "Dragons are deceptive. Everyone knows that. Might be the thing was trying to fool us and pry the world back into the greedy talons of him and his kind. I don't trust him. No, not at all. And that's not an option."

"If Solaire falls, there is no other option," Quelana told him.

Lautrec stepped closer to her, took hold of her arms, and lowered his voice. "You know there is."

For a moment, it appeared as if the witch didn't know what he was speaking of. Then her eyes narrowed onto his and she shook her head. "There's no other option that saves Lordran."

The two of them stared defiantly into one another's eyes without speaking, as if some argument was brewing between their minds alone. Lautrec was the first to waver. He shook his head and sat back down. Quelana turned to hold Abby in her arms again. The young girl, like Lautrec, did not look happy about the revelation that Quelana could be the one to sacrifice herself.

"If there is no other way," the witch began, facing Solaire as she stroked Abby's hair. "I will do it. I will light the flames."

Quelana fixed him with a courageous stare. The bonfire cast twin reflections of flames in the pits of her emerald green eyes. She is a strong flame. And one that does not waver. Solaire nodded. "Alright, my lady. Only if there is no other way."

"If there is no other way," Abby muttered, resting her head on the witch's shoulders.

Lautrec glared at the bonfire as if he were going to strike the thing.

"Alright, friends," Solaire said. "We have our plan. We act on it at dawn. I will take brave Abby here to Logan with the soul shards. Abby, you just keep yourself safe until the rest of us come for you. Priscilla will watch for movement. When Logan heads for the Kiln... Ornstein?" The Dragonslayer's helm titled his way. "You lead a strike with the rest of the party on the wraiths while I repel down behind them and sneak inside." The Dragonslayer nodded. "I'll make it to the First Flame before Logan and deal with my father. I promise you all that. You just... you all just stay alive, alright? You don't need to defeat the Darkwraiths, only distract them. Focus on your own lives and don't worry about mine."

He glanced around the room. Quelana released Abby long enough for the young woman to nod her head. Quelana did the same. Rickert and Rhea's eyes were held on one another's, but before long they too looked to

Solaire with approval. Tarkus' hands were rubbing at the hilt of his greatsword as he bowed his agreement. The color had ran from Petrus' round face, but when Solaire fixed the man with a stare, he swallowed, stepped forth, and nodded as well. Patches leaned into his spear and ran a hand over his bald head. He looked apprehensive, but ready enough. Outside, Ornstein had turned around to face the room and when Solaire's eyes fell to him, the knight lowered to a knee and bowed.

"Logan has taken much from us, friends," Solaire told them. "He has caused us all a great deal of grief and sorrow. On the morrow, we stand against him together. For Lordran. For one another. And... for those we've lost."

"For Domhnall," Abby said at once, swiping her forearm across her rheumy eyes.

"Aye," Tarkus agreed, batting a fist against his chest.

"For Nico and Vince," Rhea added, looking briefly to Petrus who smiled wistfully at the priestess and bowed his head.

"For Andre," said Rickert.  
Rhea said, "Sieglinde and Siegmeyer, too."

"For my sisters," Quelana said, lowering herself back between Lautrec's arms. "And... for Lautrec's sister as well. For Anastacia."

Lautrec took hold of the witch and pressed his face to her neck as he stared into the bonfire but said nothing.

"For Ben."

All eyes turned to Patches. The Hyena faced each of them defiantly. "He... he wasn't so bad before Griggs, er, Logan got to him. He saved you all at the Archives. And he... he was my friend once."

A moment of silence fell over the room until Abby said, "For Ben then," and moved to Patches to squeeze his arm. The Hyena turned an uncharacteristically-sincere smile on the young woman.

Solaire waited a moment till he was sure no one had anyone else to add before saying, "And for Lordran. For those who have come before and those who will come after. For the men and women and children who has suffered in these dark times the mad sorcerer has brought upon them. For them... we fight. If we fail, all those losses we have suffered will have been in vain." He smiled. "But we won't fail. I know that to be true in my heart. We will stand together and we will triumph together, and when the hardships we've survived and the suffering we've endured is finally at its end... Logan will come to know his greatest weakness was our greatest strength." He swept his eyes across the room, making sure to hold on each

of them in turn. "Unity, friends. We are many and he is one, and tomorrow we defeat him and save Lordran...once and for all.

"Praise the Sun."

-o-o-o-

Dawn came far quicker than Solaire would have liked. In truth, he had hardly slept a wink. So when the pale, grey, light that was morning's call came creeping into the altar to wash the stone their fellowship littered in piles of blankets, Solaire was ready for it. He rose to his feet, stretched, and faced the archway leading to the bridge. Above the line of parapets and towers of the Burg, the storm raged on: swirling faster and faster into a cluster over the Firelink Shrine.

Grant us strength on this day, Solaire prayed to the Sun that had been overran and sealed away behind the darkness. Please. We need it now more than ever.

He found Abby lying on the floor beside the fountain wrapped not only in a heavy blanket, but Quelana's arms as well. The two had fallen asleep in one another's embrace and Solaire deeply regretted he had to wake them to break apart such a warming scene for such a cold reality. Behind them, sitting against the wall, Lautrec was awake as well. That didn't surprise him in the slightest. Lautrec and himself were knights, and knights rarely ever slept the night before a battle. It didn't matter; when the adrenaline of combat was in your blood, lack of sleep no longer seemed such a concern.

Solaire lowered to a knee and laid a hand gently on Abby's shoulder. "Abby... wake up, Abby. It's time."

The young woman's eyes flittered opened as she slowly sat. Quelana's arm slumped from her chest, and the witch stirred and woke as well.

"Already?" Abby asked, rubbing her fists into her eyes. "It's dawn already?"

"Unfortunately, my Lady," Solaire said softly so as not to disturb the rest of the others.

Quelana sat and turned to Lautrec. The two reached for each other's hands at once. When Quelana faced Solaire, she said, "Where are you going to take her to?"

"The end of the Burg," Solaire explained. "I'll see her safely there, but any further and Logan's wraiths might be able to surround me."

Quelana nodded. "I'll go with you."

The two ladies rose and Lautrec rose with them. Again, Solaire was not surprised. He believed whatever had happened in Izalith that bound the

knight and the witch together so closely had made them somewhat inseparable. Solaire gathered the two soul shards and the Lordvessel from their supply pack and the four of them set out into the grey morning rains at once.

The trek through the Burg was brief and uneventful. The four of them hardly spoke to one another. Abby walked with her arm laced around Quelana's, her eyes held on her own feet, a solemn expression on her face. Behind them, Lautrec stayed near, one hand on the hilt of his shotel. Solaire searched for words that might brighten the otherwise dreary atmosphere, but found none, and resolved to simply trudging forth and listening to the rain smatter the stone underfoot.

The Burg ended in an abrupt fall of stone that loomed out over the Firelink Shrine and the lands beyond. When they reached it, the four of them stepped to the parapets and looked out over the field of dead grass and crumbled stone. The Darkwraiths were nowhere to be seen. Logan, however, was.

The sorcerer was standing at the bonfire-just a small speck of dark robes from their vantage point high atop the Burg wall-and Solaire saw, with an unnerving feeling stirring in the pit of his stomach, the man's wide- brimmed hat was adorned atop his head, and his eyes were angled up at the wall, watching... as if he'd been expecting them to come all along.

Quelana squeezed Abby to her chest. "That man is unnatural. Abby... don't you let him hurt you."

Abby stared down at Logan as she spoke. "No... No, I won't. It will be me who hurts him."

Solaire returned his gaze and saw Logan reached his arm up over his head and actually wave up at them. Does he know? How could he? How could he have possibly known we would come?

"I have a bad feeling about this," Quelana said, glaring down at the mad sorcerer.

"We've come too far to turn back now," Abby told her. "And I'm ready. Solaire..."

Hesitantly, he stepped before the young woman, placed the souls shards in the Lordvessel, and passed the chalice to her. Abby took it reverently in her hands and Solaire noted they were shaking a bit as she did. Despite all of her display of courage, he thought, there is still some fear lurking within her. Rightfully so. Poor thing. If only I could go in her place.

"We will come for you soon, alright Abby?" Quelana said, leaning in to kiss the girl's cheek. "You'll be fine. I know it. We won't let that monster hurt you."

Abby flashed what Solaire thought was a rather wan smile. "I know."

Quelana pulled a breath, stared at her, and then leaned in to hug her and kiss at her cheek again. "I'm so sorry this had to be you."

Abby's eyes found Lautrec's over Quelana's shoulder. The knight nodded his head, stepped forth, and patted her arm. "Keep your head up, girl. We'll be seeing you soon enough."

With an effort, Quelana pried herself from the girl and retreated to Lautrec's arms for comfort instead. Abby took a deep breath and moved for the stairs. When she found their top, Solaire bowed his head and said, "My lady. I assure you I will keep that promise I made earlier. Before long... you will see this darkness at its end. You will see the bad times... be over."

Abby nodded, turned, and disappeared beneath the line of the stairwell.

A few moments later, they saw her emerge down in the grass field beside the bonfire. Logan stepped forth and widened his arms as if to hug her, but Abby shied away. The sorcerer grabbed for her wrist, tugged at it, and the two disappeared a moment later behind the rock wall that protruded from the Burg's side.

"She's gone," Quelana whispered. Lautrec held her a bit tighter.

"What's done is done now," Solaire told them. "We should return to the Altar at once. I need inform Priscilla to keep vigil for movement."

Quelana nodded and turned for the journey back, but Laturec did not move. When she looked to him, he said, "I need a word with Solaire."

Quelana looked between the two of them and lingered a moment before bowing her acquiescence and heading back for the stairs to give them privacy.

When she'd gone, Solaire asked, "What is it, Lautrec?"

Lautrec stared at him a moment before leaning atop the city's parapets and nodding out across the field that stretched beneath them. "The Firelink Shrine... you know, that's where this whole adventure began for most of us. It was there that I took Quelana and fled this world in the talons of the great crow. Fled to the Asylum and triggered this whole madness that has sprung up around us. And now... now it is that very same place where it will all come to an end." A snort of mirthless laughter erupted from his throat. "But I guess that's the thing about cycles... they always come back around."

"I suppose so." Solaire still wasn't sure what the point of this conversation was.

Lautrec was quiet a moment as he held his gaze wistfully on the skies. "Quelana's sisters built her a boat."

"A boat?"

"A vessel to carry her out to Lordran's sprawling ocean. To carry her to our world's final fog gate... the one that no man who's crossed has ever returned, according to the dragon." He faced Solaire. "And if I had had my way, we would not be here right now. I wanted to leave. I wanted to take Quelana and give her the freedom from this damned, bitter, world that she so rightfully deserves. ...but she wouldn't have it. She insisted on coming back to fight. For Lordran. For Abby. For you."

Solaire stared; there was not much else he could think to do in light of the man's revelation.

"And now in a short amount of time," Lautrec went on, "She will put her life in danger... and may even try sacrificing it to the flames." He straightened and stepped closer to Solaire. "Well I'm telling you now, knight, that if something were to happen... something where I had to choose her or you... I'll choose her."

Solaire held his gaze and nodded. "I understand. I appreciate your honesty, Lautrec." He extended his hand into the short gap between them.

Lautrec eyed it, hesitated, but shook nonetheless. He turned to leave and-

-Solaire did not release his hand. The action jerked the knight of Carim back in place and Lautrec spun on him angrily. "But you hear me now, Lautrec. Lordran is my concern. It always has been. It always will be. And Logan... he is a disease to this world, and I need to know we are on similar grounds here. Logan must be stopped. At any cost. The man has manipulated you to his bidding once... I need you to assure me he won't do it again."

A cold wind swirled between them, temporarily deafening their ears, and for a moment, Lautrec's glare intensified and Solaire thought the man might actually reach for his shotel. Then the winds died down and Lautrec only said, "Who does Lordran belong to?"

"What?"

"The dragon... when I stood before him in the Great Hollow he asked me that question. 'Who does Lordran belong to?' He said when I had the answer, I would know for certain what 'choice' was best for this world."

Solaire shook his head. "Well I certainly don't think it belongs to me, if that's what you're-"

"I'm not."

Solaire narrowed his eyes on the knight of Carim's. "Can we at least agree that it does not belong to Logan?"

"We can," Lautrec said with a nod. "And when we face off against the sorcerer, I assure you... I will kill that bastard. You don't need worry about that. Before it's all said and done, I will kill him."

"Then I suppose that puts us on the same side regardless of our thoughts on Lordran and who it 'belongs' to, doesn't it?" Solaire asked.

"I suppose it does."

Thunder grumbled in the South. It pulled both their eyes to its direction. The storm was swirling more and more violently then, sucking up all the dark clouds that plagued the sky into a mass of chaos and lightning above the Firelink Shrine.

No, not the Shrine, Solaire thought. The Kiln. The place where soon enough... one way or another... this all comes to an end.

Lautrec pulled his hand from Solaire's and left to rejoin Quelana. Solaire let his eyes linger a moment longer on the storm before turning to join them.

When they returned to the Altar, they began preparations at once to head out.

...and to face the final battle.

Chapter 64 - The End

The mad sorcerer stood atop a mountain of skulls and misery. Lightning as fierce as flames and as blue as the seas crackled all around him in a web of incandescent rage. He raised his arms to his sides and the folds of his robes drooped down and formed into the great, leathery, wings of a dragon. When he opened his mouth, it revealed an oval of blood-stained fangs, and from between them came a spear of searing fire. He lifted from the ground and took flight with his dragon's wings, circling his skull mountain and cackling like some mad demon risen from the depths of Izalith itself.

Lying dead at the foot of the mountain with tears of blood leaking from their eyes and gaping wounds soaking the grounds beneath them were Quelana and Anastacia; only corpses then and nothing more.

Lautrec screamed a scream that carried no sound and rushed to them on legs that were made of stone and carried him forth laboriously and sluggish.

Solaire stepped in his way and raised his sword and Lautrec saw the man had no eyes any longer, for from the eyeslits of his helm came only two blinding rays of pure light instead. When the knight swept his gaze around the chamber of nothingness, the light cut a stark line in the darkness and drew to a halt fixated upon Lautrec's soul. The Knight of Sunlight took a defensive stance to prevent him from coming any further and helping the two fallen women who were the only things in the world that mattered then and were, perhaps, the only thing that had ever mattered, for without them, the world was as barren and hollow as the skulls that comprised the sorcerer's mountain.

"Who does Lordran belong to?" The Demon Knight in Solaire's skin asked, his voice that of the Everlasting Dragon.

"Who?"

The walls rumbled and caved in and only the knight's beaming eyes pierced forth, finding their way into Lautrec's head and heart and soul and booming in a voice that deafened him at once: "WHO!?"

-o-o-o-

He woke gasping for air and sitting up so suddenly the world spun around him. Lautrec pulled a breath as if it were the last one he'd ever pull again and widened his eyes to saucers as his hand curled to fists and his heart worked at hammering out of his ribcage. "Not you," he croaked from a throat that was as dry as dead grass.

"Are you alright?"

He turned to see Quelana kneeling at his side and relief washed over him at once. He reached for her, took her in his arms, and pulled her to his body. His face pressed against hers and Lautrec breathed deeply from the fragrant aroma that always lingered in the wonderful, ebony, strands of her hair. She was warm and soft and-most importantly-alive, and that alone was enough to calm him at once.

Quelana held him in return a moment in silence before asking, "You didn't sleep last night, did you?"

How could I? he thought. The last time I left you to sleep unguarded, the pyromancer took you from me. And almost succeeded in taking your life... forever. He choose to leave that morbid thought unspoken and answer her simply. "No."

He pulled away from her enough to gaze into the soft, emerald, circles that were her beautiful eyes and was overcome with the amorous urge to feel her lips against his. He cupped her chin in his hands and brought her face nearer, slow and reverent: as if she were the world's most fragile flower, and required a great amount of delicacy and care. He kissed her just as tenderly, and the warmth of her lips quelled the last bits of anxiety his nightmare had left stirring in him at once. He reached for the curves of her hips and pulled her a bit closer.

Quelana pried her lips from him and spoke quickly before he could cover them up again, "It's time."

"Time?"

She faced sideways and nodded. Lautrec followed her eyeline to the interior of the Altar he had dozed off in. All around them, Solaire's fellowship was readying themselves, and the sounds of preparation he'd been deaf to in Quelana's embrace filled his ears all at once. Tarkus was stretching his iron-cast arms out to their sides and and working his massive greatsword around in circles to loosen his wrist's flexibility; an old knight's tactic that Lautrec knew well. Rickert and Rhea were quietly discussing something in the corner of the room: the young man's face uncharacteristically somber; the priestess' drawn in pensive lines. The big, round, bastard, Petrus, was wobbling about the rim of the room with his mace held at the ready. Beneath his bobbed haircut, his complexion was the color of spoiled milk. Patches was leaned against the wall with his spear drawn up to his chest. He rubbed his hands around the weapon's hilt and stared forth with blank inscrutability as to what thoughts might be roaming in his bald head.

Missing from the party was both Solaire and the Dragonslayer Ornstein, and Lautrec turned on Quelana at once and squeezed her slender, soft, hands between his calloused, hardened, ones. "I don't want you going near Solaire."

She turned an inquisitive look on him. "What are you talking about?"

"I... had a nightmare. Just.. just stay away from him, alright? Lordran's not his and neither are you."

Quelana's frown deepened. "What is that supposed to mean, Lautrec?"

"I don't know. My nightmare. He was there and... and I think he... maybe, he-"

Quelana reached for his cheek and he was helpless but to hold his tongue and stare into her eyes again. She said, "Lautrec, listen to me. Whatever paranoid thoughts this 'nightmare' of yours may have awoken, you must let them go. We are going to face Logan, and if he were to find any inkling of weakness in our group, he would exploit it and turn it against us. Solaire was right last night. We need unity to defeat him. So, please. Forget your dream. We need you." She leaned forth and kissed the bridge of his nose. "I need you."

"Why did the dragon ask me that?" He questioned with a shake of his head. "'Who does Lordran belong to?'. Why would he ask me that at all? He must've been hinting at something. Logan... Solaire... they both might want it for themselves, or perhaps-"

"Please," was the only word she said and kissed his brow to, perhaps, seal the plead.

He held her imploring look for a long moment before finally sighing and offering her a nod. "Alright."

Her lips found his one last time before she rose and extended a hand for him to join her. Lautrec used it in conjunction with the wall at his back to get to his feet. That act, it seemed, was getting harder and harder the closer they got to the end. How many bumps and bruises had he accrued since their journey's start? How many bridges could a man be thrown from before he stopped getting back up? How many demons and half- mad bishops could he take blows from before one came he could not. How much more could he endure? Enough to protect Quelana? Enough to see them safely to the end of whatever madness their story would most certainly conclude in?

His thoughts turned to the ocean, and to the final gate of fog at its rim. "You still won't leave with me," he said; it wasn't a question.

Quelana answered it with a shake of her head anyway. "We can't, Lautrec. We're so close to the end."

"Yeah... the end." And is there anyway that 'end' doesn't conclude in tragedy?

Her eyes flicked between his and it was clear from the look on her face

she could read the apprehension within him. She pushed past it; what else, he supposed, was there to do? "We're moving on the Firelink Shrine in a few moments. Priscilla has given the word." She turned to face the archway spilling onto the bridge outside, where the storm raged and the rains poured and the winds screamed, and her own look of apprehension briefly wrinkled her comely features. "The crossbreed believes Logan will move for the Kiln soon.

"The Darkwraiths are stirring."

(==============)

As she was led through the grass-the ankle-high muds sucking at the soles of her boots as the rain poured endlessly around the drab and morbid scene that was the cemetery grounds-Abby exerted every bit of willpower she had not to tremble beneath Logan's heavily-robed arm. The man moved her forth with a lackadaisical pace that betrayed the urgency of the day that even the sky seemed to be aware of: overhead, a mass of purple clouds was swirling into a sinuous and insidious oval of foreboding darkness. Abby was helpless but to move with him, though, and she could feel the man's long fingers playing at the ends of her hair as they walked. It made her think of the legs of a spider, playing with its cocooned victim.

He had not said a word since she'd first come trudging through the muds up to him with the half-filled Lordvessel in tow, but then, as they reached the edge of the cemetery grounds that peaked out over the maddening fall to New Londo, he halted, spun her to face him, and said, "My Abigail. I've missed you, my dear."

When he spoke, she could see the scabbed line of dry blood where Patches had ran his dagger across. Otherwise, Logan looked no worse for the wear since the Hyena and herself had attempted murdering him. She made a conscious effort not to let her eyes linger on the slightly misshapen lump beneath his collarbone and robes. The primordial crystal was there, and before the end she would need to obtain it. That was more important than anything.

"My little Abigail?"

She lifted her eyes to his and forced a smile. "Yes. I'm sorry. I was... afraid for a moment."

"Afraid, my dear?"

"You frighten me sometimes."

Logan's lips curled sardonically and soft laughter rumbled from the seam of his closed mouth. "As I should, I suppose. You did do an awfully mean thing to me the last time we spoke." He rubbed the wound on his neck.

"You didn't bring your little pet hyena along this time, mmm?"

"I'm alone," she said, lifting the Lordvessel between them. "And I brought you a gift to atone for my actions."

Logan looked between her and the half-filled vessel. His lips curled even more grotesquely. "Yes. So you have." He raised a hand and hooked a finger and before she'd even spotted the thing's approach, a Darkwraith was at the sorcerer's side. Logan gestured for the dark knight to take the vessel from her, which it did immediately. When the thing left, the thickness in the air trailing along with it, Logan affixed her those dark, narrow-set, eyes that sat perched over the beak of his nose once again. "You're friends want me to open the Kiln for them, mmm?"

He knows. Abby refused to let her mouth gape. She pressed her lips together, swallowed, and said nothing.

Logan laughed. "It's alright, dear, for I have forseen this course of action many, many, nights ago. Truthfully, what else could your rats hope for? Time, as per usual, is against them, and this issue of Gwyn needs to be dealt with. The only course of action, as foolish as it may be, is to have me do their work for them before sneaking up and snatching the fruits of my labor from my poor, poor, hands." His eyes floated back towards the mucky grounds around the shrine. "But I assure you I've taken the necessary prophylactic measures to counter the plague they'd bring forth to the sacred grounds of the Kiln."

Abby's skin crawled. She wasn't sure what his words meant, but she did not like the sounds of them. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing, dear," he assured her with a wink. "Now, shall we discuss why those pretty blue eyes of yours have flittered to my chest four times since entering my company?"

Oh no. That time, Abby could not catch her mouth before it fell agape. She croaked a helpless whimper and shook her head. "I... I don't..."

"Surely, you're not enamored with me as your were with your brave, golden, knight, so I presume you've got other intentions. Mmm." His eyes held on hers and Abby watched as a darkness filled them with malice. "So you've ascertained the truth about my immortality, mmm?"

"No," she answered curtly, but Logan's cold expression told her at once he did not buy it for a moment.

"Oh, when you rodents get your snouts together sniffing around for secrets, you can be quite efficient at times, can't you?" Without further hesitation, he tucked a hand beneath the neckline of his robes and fished out the crystal. It came rising up from the ocean of crimson cloth and- even with the lack of sun in the grey sky-seemed to twinkle and sparkle as it rotated at the end of a long, silver, chain.

Abby could only stare.

Logan's lips curled again. "There it is. Is that what they've sent you to obtain? Obtain and shatter to bits so I can be murdered by the gnawing teeth of a dozen rats who weren't as clever or ambitious as I? Mmm." He chuckled. "Abigail, a man's power does not lie in trinkets. It lies in his mind. This bit of crystal means nothing to me. In fact: here you are, dear. Take it."

And just like that, he guided the loop of the chain over his wide-brimmed hat, dangled it above her hands till they opened, and dropped it within. It fell to her palms and Abby stared down at the thing in wonder. It was small and sharp-edged and warm and she could not help but think of it as Logan's heart; still and lifeless, but as necessary to the man's preservation as a heart all the same.

"My gift to you, my Dark Queen," Logan's voice broke into her daze. "You may do with it as you please. Careful, though. It is rather tied to my immortality."

There was no decision to be made; she did not hesitate in the slightest.

Abby spun to the cliffside, wrenched back her arm, and hurled the thing off to plummet down and shatter in the lands of New Londo below.

Or at least, she would have had Logan not caught her wrist mid-throw. He was an old man, but in that moment, he held her slim wrist with an inhuman strength that perhaps would best even Tarkus or the Dragonslayer. Abby slowly turned on him and swallowed a lump that'd formed up in her throat.

Logan's expression was placid enough, but that cold darkness in his eyes had reached new depths. "Well... I suppose now we know where your loyalties lie, don't we, Abigail?"

Abby shook her head. "I-"

Logan yanked a dagger from within his robes and thrust it forth into the side of her stomach.

Abby choked back a cry as a severe bolt of pain rippled up from the wound into her chest, her throat, her head, her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut in agony and winced as blood blossomed from her abdomen and dampened her cleric's robes and leaked down to her inner thigh. Her breath locked in her chest and she was helpless but to whimper again and stumble forth into Logan's waiting arms.

When she tried speaking, the sorcerer stroked at her hair and shushed her. "There there, my dear. Shhhhh. Now, listen closely, Abigail. You've overestimated your importance to me. That was your mistake. It was a good plan you and your rats concocted, but you overlooked that small

flaw. It's not your fault."

Her head slumped to his shoulder as the pain in her stomach grew unbearable to continue standing. Her legs trembled. Her mouth opened and closed and opened again, but no sound leaked from within but whimpers and croaks.

"Now, what I've just done to you is killyou, Abigail," Logan explained calmly; fingers still in her hair. "But I've left you the choice of how quick or slow you want your death to be. You can remove the dagger and let the blood poor from your body and you might die within a few minutes. Maybe quicker. Or, if you still cling to the hope that your friends will succeed, you can leave it in. The blade and hilt will act as a sort of plug on your poor little stomach there, and you can prolong your life, albeit with quite a bit of intolerable suffering."

Abby made herself look down. Her robes were stained red.

"You see, the amusing thing about this is I've left you with choice, my Chosen!" He laughed. "Isn't that what it's all about in the end? Decisions? Mmm, yes. You make them, you live with them. Now make yours. I don't care either way. I did want you as my Dark Queen once... but the rats have tainted your mind and turned you to a rat Queen instead, and I fear you are beyond salvation, my dear. A shame. I rather liked you. But, I'm afraid, this is farewell."

He stepped back, plucking the crystal away from her as he did, and without his support to lean into, Abby fell to her knees. Her hands reached for her stomach, but severe pain rippled forth when they grazed it, and she pulled them back before her face: blood-soaked and trembling. She looked for Logan, but he was already gone, and the only things marching forth for her across the cemetery grounds were two Darkwraiths; living shadows stalking through the land of dead.

Abby sucked cold air through her teeth and winced when another bolt of agony from her stomach accompanied it. She slumped forth and caught her weight by planting her hands in the muds, and was on the verge of closing her eyes when they found something.

Lying there discarded and forlorn in the muds, a dirty-white speck amidst a sea of brown, a piece of paper was folded. That's it, she thought. That is Lautrec's note to Anastacia. I thought I'd lost it, but it only must've slipped from my small clothes when Patches rescued me from the grave. The sight of it somehow, someway, instilled her with the very same strength she'd seen instilled in Ana before her death. Abby pulled a breath, braced herself, and crawled the short distance to the thing as quickly as she could; the Darkwraiths were near.

Her hand closed around it just as the wraith's hands closed on her shoulders. When they yanked her to her feet, pain filled her belly, but

Abby ignored it for she had retrieved the note and set about tucking it away in her breast pocket at once; safe from the cavernous eyes of the wraiths that had captured her.

They hauled her through the cemetery, the toes of her boots dragging just low enough to cut trenches in the mud, and brought her up a short flight of stone stairs, around a half-cracked pillar, and below an archway before dumping her into a makeshift cage of wooden planks and bamboo rods.

She landed hard on the floor of the cage, grinding her teeth and balling her fists to stave off the pain that had accompanied the fall, and heard the knights lock her in at once. The thing was small, hardly enough room to sit straight even if she could, and just as she was about to lie herself down, her eyes found something at the opposite end of the cage. She was not alone.

The shivering, sickly, man curled into the fetal position at the cage's corner was bald and hideously scarred. He was dressed in scant rags, and what flesh Abby could see poking out of them was scabbed over and welted up with endless burn marks. When the wraiths took up position at the cage's exterior flanks and hoisted the prison up to float at their knees, the bald man who was her inmate lifted his head and Abby gasped.

"Ben!?" She hissed the word with such fierce incredulity, her stomach hurt from exertion.

Ben's face, hardly recognizable without hair on his head or brow or chin any longer and littered with burn marks instead, scrunched up indignantly and shook with such contemptuous rage, Abby feared he might leap for her. The moment passed, however, and he resolved to lie back to the cage's flooring and tighten up the ball he was curled into.

"Gods," she muttered, helpless but to stare at the sad sight before her. "Ben, I'm... I'm so sorry this happened to you."

"Not Ben," he croaked without lifting his head. "Dark Lord. I'm the... Dark Lord."

Even now, reduced to nothing but a disfigured and broken husk of a man, Logan's deceptions still keep hold of his mind, she thought with utter revulsion. "Ben... I'm dying. Logan's killed me as he's, likely, killed you. But I promise you. We will live to see him fail. Solaire and Lautrec and Quelana and the rest... they're coming. They're coming to defeat him, Ben."

Despite the grotesque state of his physical self, Ben actually laughed then. It was a coarse, grating, sound entirely devoid of either humor or joy. "Can't. Can't defeat him. He is God now. One God. One God and his Dark Lord to rule. Rise and rule," then, finally, wistfully, sadly, "...I miss her."

He began quietly snickering into his own hands-the haunting melody of

madness-and Abby had to turn away from the sight, lest her heart break.

Their cage was hauled over a shallow pond and brought to the edge of a gaping hole in the earth. Abby leaned forth to peek inside, but she didn't end up needing to: the wraiths attached the cage to a pulley system and shoved her and Ben over it. The cage went swaying over the pit of darkness and the cold tunneling up from within was on every inch of her body at once, wrapping her in its icy embrace in welcome.

This is the entrance to the Kiln, she thought, swallowing back her fears and cradling her mortally wounded abdomen. This is the final descent.

And without further hesitation, they began lowering; the ancient stone grounds seeping up around the cage to submerge them into a well of pure darkness.

(=============)

Quelana found Solaire standing atop a raised bit of stone in the street connecting the Parish Altar with the chapel further along the path. The knight had one foot resting on the broken indentation of a parapet, and his eyes were held-longingly, Quelana thought-on the sky. She followed his eyeline and figured if there had been a Sun to gaze at, the man most certainly would have been gazing at it. There was not, though: only a canvas of lifeless grey soaking in purple clouds that twisted and gnarled with the winds. Accordingly, Solaire's usual indomitable optimism and courage was missing from the man's face. It was not an easy thing to look upon.

When she neared, his gaze turned to her and Quelana saw the effort the knight had to make to smile. "My Lady. It's time, isn't it?"

"It's time."

He nodded, pulled a breath, and stepped down from the platform to find equal footing before her. Their eyes held on one another for a moment before Quelana stepped into his arms and gave the knight a hug. "Be safe, Solaire."

"You too, Lady Quelana."

"And don't get any ideas about joining the fray when you hear the sound of swords clashing," she instructed amicably. "I know how you knights are at times. The symphony of battle plays in your ears with its enticing melody and you're all but helpless to add your voices to the chorus."

He chuckled. "Yes, a flaw for certain, my lady."  
She pulled back and fixed him with a sober look. "Truly, Solaire... may

whatever Gods left to this world watch over you and see you with safety and haste to the Kiln."

He smiled and kissed her hand. "Let us hope, my lady. Praise the Sun."

She was readying to return the words when a tower of black iron armor came barreling up beside them. For a moment, she worried Tarkus was bringing ill news, some surreptitious tactic Logan had waited to the final hour to unleash upon them, but the big man only politely worked his way between their embrace and wrapped his large arms around the Knight of Sunlight. Solaire could only laugh as the man hoisted him off the ground.

"This is it, my brother," Tarkus bellowed. "We part ways now, but not for long. I will come meet you in the Kiln with a couple of Darkwraith heads as trophies of our victory in the battlefield."

"And I will be waiting, friend," Solaire told the man earnestly enough, but Quelana saw a flash of doubt cross the knight's face.

Tarkus set Solaire back down and swiped at his eyes. "If not... I will see you on the other side, brother... wherever that may be."

Solaire nodded, that wan smile taking his face again, and the two shook hands.

Tarkus asked, "You coming, Quelana?"

She sighed and turned one last time to the Knight of Sunlight. "Goodbye, Solaire."

He bowed. "Goodbye, my lady."

Goodbye, she thought. It sounded so final, but in times as uncertain as those they faced... perhaps they needed the finality of the word; a stark reminder of the endeavors they would meet, and the strength they would need to maintain to persevere.

They left Solaire's company and headed back. At the archway that spilled into the Altar of Sunlight, Lautrec was leaned against the wall in wait, fully armed and armored then in his suit of gold, his eyes narrowed patiently on her approach. When she stepped before him, he looked ready to admonish her-likely for going to Solaire after he'd asked her not too-but Quelana covered his lips with her own in hopes to conciliate his anger and avoid a conversation they did not have the time to partake in. When their mouths parted, the tactic seemed-at least for the moment-to work, and Lautrec allowed her to guide him into the Altar without protest.

There were no preparations left to make by then. Everyone was fully adorned in their armor the same as Lautrec; spears and swords and staves and talismans at the ready. Quelana swept her gaze across their faces. There was apprehension there, but that was understandable. They were

heading off to face Lordran's most notorious force in the wraiths, and the conclusion, even if victorious, was uncertain. But upon those same faces she found something else. A readiness. A courageousness. A hopefulness. Outside, the storm beat down upon Lordran as relentless and tenacious as any knight or warrior that had ever roamed the earth, but here their fellowship stood beneath it in defiance; not one of them looking ready to lie down and accept defeat. It filled Quelana with a bravery of her own, and so when they departed-Lautrec and herself, Rickert, Rhea, Tarkus, Petrus, Patches, and the Dragonslayer-her legs did not shake, her hands did not tremble, and her heart did not flutter. They were going to fight. And if they Gods were good: they were going to win.

Their fellowship crossed the bridge adjoining the Parish and the Burg in silence. Quelana saw every one of them, Dragonslayer included, turn their looks to the South, where that ominous swirl of clouds was beckoning them forth with purple fingers hooking up into its core. Lightning speared the earth from its belly; the bolt fierce and tinged blue. As it was when Logan's machine was activated in the Archives, and a window to another world was briefly opened, Quelana thought, thankful she had Lautrec's arm at her side to squeeze.

Halfway across the bridge, and no one had uttered a word. Tarkus, perhaps growing impatient with the silence, turned on Rickert and said, "Rick, tell a jest or something. Damned quiet. It feels like we're marching off to our own execution."

"Might be we is," Patches muttered. "Didn't ask you, Hyena," Tarkus growled.

Rickert scratched at his chin as they walked on. "Alright. What do you call a Blighttown Mosquito dressed up in a suit of metal?"

Tarkus grinned. "What?"

"A bite in shining armor."

"Oh, Gods, Rickert," Rhea groaned.

Tarkus shook his head. "Well... if that joke isn't a bad omen for the upcoming fight, I don't know what is."

"What?" Rickert protested. "It's a good joke! A bite in shining armor! Like 'knight'?"

"Oh, yes," Tarkus began dryly, "your explanation has made it far more amusing, Rick. Thank you. Hey, while your at it, maybe you can tell us another story about that 'pet drake' of yours. What was his name again? Steven? Paul?"

"Charles," Rickert corrected. "And Charles is no jest. You'll be eating them

words if he shows up on the battlefield today to help us against the wraiths."

Tarkus laughed. "Rickert, if that happens, I'll tell you what: I'll confess to the whole of Lordran that Rickert of Vinheim is stronger than Black Iron Tarkus."

Rickert grinned himself. "I'll hold you to that, Cradlebreaker."

Tarkus looked ready to retort when a great rumbling started up beneath their feet. Lautrec took hold of Quelana at once and unsheathed a shotel. The rest scrambled for defensive stances as the rumbling swelled and grew until it seemed as if the whole of Lordran was being torn apart from its core. The bridge lurched on its side like a drunk too deep in his cups, and bits of stone shook loose from the flanking barriers at their waists. Beyond those crumbling barriers, Quelana narrowed her eyes into the lower streets of the Burg, where a clutter of three-story buildings were trembling like frightened children. What little bits of shattered glass remained to them blasted apart as the leftmost building slumped into the other two, and shortly after the whole trio was coming down. It looked like the earth had opened its mouth to swallow them up as the stone smashed to bits and a cloud of dust and debris rose in their place.

When it had finished, the tremor and the destruction it had birthed waning away, their party stood in the deafening silence left in the aftermath, looking to one another with matching expressions of concern. The slight moment of reprieve from the coming fight Rickert's facetiousness had woken had all but vanished, and the somber reality of the endeavors that lay before them was apparent once more.

It was the Dragonslayer who spoke into that bleak silence first. "Come. There is no time for fear or worry. There is war to be waged."

If anyone had any objection to the knight's command, they did not voice them: they set off for the Firelink Shrine at once.

The rest of the journey through the Burg was, thankfully, uneventful. No tremors came, though the winds and rain were growing increasingly more fierce, and when Quelana turned her eyes on the swirl of clouds in the South that was to be their destination, she no longer thought they looked like a mere gathering of clouds at all. It is a castle, she mused. A castle of darkness in the sky, with great beasts of thunder and lightning prowling their halls and stalking their dungeons and hurling spears of destruction down from their battlements.

"...Quelana."

She was pulled from her reverie by Lautrec's voice. When she faced him, he reached for her cheek and stroked his thumb along her jawline. "Are you alright?"

"Yes," she answered curtly. "Yes, thank you."

His grey eyes bore into hers. "It's not too late. The ocean... we can still leave."

She smiled, imagining the gesture looked as wan and feeble as Solaire's had been in the Parish, and allowed him to continue stroking her cheek as she answered, "No we can't. Not yet."

He sighed and looked ready to press the issue further, and likely would have if the Dragonslayer's muted voice had not bellowed from beneath his lion's helm: "Halt!"

And every one of them did, turning their rapt attention on the front of their ranks, where Knight Ornstein was staring off the wall and across the field that separated them and the Firelink Shrine beyond.

"What is it?" Petrus asked from the rear, brining up his mace just a bit higher to his quivering jowls.

Ornstein was quiet a moment before answering. "The wraiths are waiting at the shrine."

Quelana stepped forth to see, but Lautrec held her back. She turned an annoyed look on him and he, begrudgingly, allowed her forward, but only after stepping forth himself. He is so protective, she thought, following along. It wasn't a bad realization. It had been a long time since someone had cared enough for her to bother being protective, so when she joined at his side, she took his hand and squeezed it appreciatively.

Beyond the steep fall of stone that ended the Burg, the muddy clearing of dead grass and broken pillars that made up the Firelink Shrine's grounds awaited. All around it, in an oppressive sea of black that was so dark it was if the things stood in defiance of light itself, the wraiths awaited. The twin tunnels that carved into the creature's skull masks were fixed upon their group on the wall, the knight's hands at the hilts of their black blades, their black boots sunk to the ankles in mud. Quelana counted six, twelve, eighteen, and lost count after twenty. And Gods only know how many might be lying in wait behind those we can see.

"What are they doing?" Rhea asked.  
"Looks like they're guarding the way to the Kiln," Tarkus answered.

"They know we have to go face 'em on their own turf," Patches muttered. "Bloody hell..."

"Something isn't right," Ornstein said.

"Well, yeah, we've got to fight with a whole bunch of Darkwraiths for one!" Rickert exclaimed.

"No, the Dragonslayer has the right of it," Lautrec began, sweeping his eyes across the black army's ranks. "They shouldn't be waiting that far back. Their numbers hold no advantage there."

"Right," Ornstein agreed. "If they wanted to keep us from the Kiln, they would work to choke off that narrow bit of the path wedged between the cliffside and the mountain. If they allow us to press on them that close to the Kiln, we could spread out, get on their flanks, cause unnecessary disorder to their force. As I said: something isn't right here."

"Hey!" Patches shouted. "Look! There!"

Their party followed his extended finger down below the wall. Rushing forth from beneath them, a single wraith moved in retreat. It was quick to hurry back into the ranks of its brethren and turn on them.

"What was that bastard up to?" Tarkus questioned.

Quelana sniffed at the air. A strange aroma had surfaced. She was readying to voice her concern about the peculiar scent when Lautrec threw his arms around her so suddenly, the wind was knocked from her. He shuffled them backwards and Quelana managed to shout, "What are you doing!?", before the world came crashing down around them.

The smell, she realized then, had been the lit fuse of what must have been a great number of firebombs, for the stone beneath their feet erupted up in a geyser of chaos, and a great booming sounded in her ears that was ten fold more deafening than any thunder she'd ever heard. Both Lautrec and herself were flung to the ground in the explosion's velocity; Lautrec landing atop her and shielding her with his armored body. A great fog of dust swept the Burg wall and Quelana was simultaneously blind and deaf and gasping for air that had suddenly turned bitter and thick. Someone was screaming, but the world was still far too muted to make out anything more than the underlying anguish within the primal sound. She hurt in a dozen places. Her eyes stung fiercely when she tried opening them. Breathing was growing more arduous with every pull.

From somewhere far away in the faint chaotic swirl of noise that was slowly seeping back into her head, she heard the Dragonslayer's shout of: "The wraiths are coming! Ready yourselves! Ready yourselves now! They're charging the Burg!

"The wraiths are charging the Burg!"

(============)

The cage slammed against the cold and rocky earth, bringing the prison to an abrupt halt, and Abby thought she heard anothersort of 'slamming' playing faintly from high, high, above; where the rectangle of missing

stone they'd entered the grounds of the Lordvessel from was now just a dimly lit pinpoint overheard with rains drizzling in from the storm- plagued skies.

She didn't have long to linger on the thought, for a great cold wrapped her in its icy embrace at once, and the pain from her stomach that had been suppressed in the adrenaline-fueled descent into Lordran's most ancient cavern returned. She clenched her teeth till it felt as if she might shatter them and dug her fingers into the flesh around her dagger- plugged belly. The pain was so severe in that moment, she thought she might pass into unconsciousness.

When she didn't, Abby forced her eyes open to slits and stared past the barred wall of her cage to look upon the stone altar that Logan was ascending: awash in his crimson robes; a filled and glowing chalice held reverently in his hands. She moved her head listlessly around the rest of the cavernous dark they'd plunged into and found two Darkwraiths standing guard at either side of her prison. Beyond, only ancient, shadowed, walls that-for all she knew-might stretch on for an eternity around them. The notion made her head spin and she had to squeeze her eyes shut till it passed.

A tremendous rumbling opened them again. At the stone altar, Logan stood flanked by enormous, moss-ridden, pillars as he set the Lordvessel in place between them and lifted his hands skywards. His robes dangled below his arms as he did and for one maddening moment, Abby thought they looked like the wings of a dragon.

Past Logan and the altar, a section of wall carved and indented into the cavern began sliding away, the harsh sound of stone-grinding-stone filling the silence up with its deafening melody. When the sound trailed off, Abby narrowed her eyes into what lay beyond, but by then her vision was blurred, the edges tinged as black as the wraiths themselves, and she had trouble focusing on any one point for long. What brief glimpses she caught were of a twisting path snaking its way through a canyon; an ethereal, dreamlike, fog floating preciously two feet from the ground.

Beyond: the Kiln awaited.

A swirl of cold wind rushed forth from the opened archway and Abby thought: But is that Lordran's cold, or the cold of my coming death? She pulled her hands away from her stomach and the sight that met her was gruesome and macabre: her hands looked like they were fitted in dark red gloves.

She slumped into the bars of the cage when the wraiths flanking it hoisted the prison up between them and began hauling it forth. Even the simple act of lifting her head had become arduous and painful, and so she let it rest on her shoulder as she watched their ascent up the altar and behind Logan as he sauntered forth into the final path before the Kiln

with his eyes held wide and childlike on the canyon walls around them. His long fingers danced at the ends of his hands, as if he were composing a silent symphony of his own triumph.

Abby tasted blood in her mouth. "Ben," she croaked, forcing her eyes to stay at least at half-mast.

At the other side of the cage, the bald, disfigured, and scarred lump that had once been Ben stirred only slightly from his fetal position.

Abby prodded him with the toe of her boot, though that simple act sent a bolt of anguish into her stomach as well. "Ben... please listen to me."

Ben, if he'd heard at all, did not seem interested in her pleads. He cradled his face and rocked back and forth, snickering like a madman and ignoring her entirely.

Abby, with no option remaining to her and time running out, allowed herself to tumble face-first to the cage floor. When her stomach collided with the bars, she could not hold back a scream as pain filled every inch of her. She gasped for air and trembled until it passed. When it had, she crawled the short distance between Ben and herself and reached for his arm.

Ben's mad eyes flittered to hers and narrowed apprehensively, but by then it was too late for him to stop her. She gripped him with every last bit of strength that remained to her, closed her eyes, found the madness living in his head, and cupped it in an calming embrace the same as she had Patches' fear or Laturec's anger. When she opened her eyes again, Ben's look had turned placid and soft.

"Now listen to me," she whispered, every word feeling as if it were pressing the dagger further into her belly. "I'm going to die, Ben. I can't... I can't go on anymore. I'm losing blood too fast and I'm too weak from everything that's happened...." She had to pause to catch her breath from the exertion of speaking. "And when I go, it's going to be up to you to help stop him. Logan. You have to... have to get the crystal from around his neck and destroy it. Do you hear me, Ben? Do you understand? I'm as good as dead, so you have to destory that crystal so Logan will turn mortal once again... and Solaire and the rest can stop him."

Ben did not answer. He only stared blankly forth, avoiding her eyes.

Abby could not hold him nor herself any longer. She released his arm and fell face-down onto the cage. She did not possess the strength to lift herself back up again, so it was there she lied still as the thing was hauled deeper and deeper into the Kiln; the cold arms of death tightening more fiercely around her with every sway of the cage. She coughed and it was no longer just the taste of blood that accompanied the act, but the sight of it: it dabbled out and covered her chin.

She grew colder. And she was tired; so tired. She closed her eyes for a rest.

(===========)

The rains pounded down harder than ever from the dark skies above, and below: the battle had begun.

There was still chaos amidst their numbers from the explosion and the deafening, blinding, carpet of debris it had brought over them, but when Lautrec clambered to his feet and swept his gaze across their ranks, he saw the panic leaving, and a courageous stoicism replacing it. That was a good thing: judging by the Dragonslayer's hasty movement to defend the gaping hole that now resided in the wall they stood upon, the wraiths were closing - and fast.

Lautrec spun back to Quelana lying at his feet and lowered to a knee. "Are you alright? Are you injured?" He looked over every inch of her, a stir of fear in his chest at what he might find.

"I'm fine," she answered (relief washing over him at once) and extended her arms for his. Lautrec took them, wrapped them around his shoulders, and lifted her to her feet. In one another's embrace again, the world seemed alright.

There was no time to linger on such pleasantries, however, for Quelana's shout of "Lautrec!" as she narrowed her eyes over his shoulder spun him back around at once. At the crumbling pit of broken stone that now made up the wall's corner, wraiths were pouring out like black liquid come to wash away the land. Three of them swept upon the Dragonslayer at once. Ornstein hoisted his spear to his chest and swatted off a barrage of attacks as they pressed him back on his heels, clearing the way for their brethren at the rear guard.

The tactic worked. Two more wraiths came flooding out. Three more. Four more. Six more. Ten more. They poured through with alarming speed, black swords raised at the ready.

Tarkus bellowed a warcry that seemed to pull their ownfellowship into action. At once, Petrus, Patches, and Rickert all joined the tower of black iron armor on a counter assault forward. They met the wraiths in combat in the middle of the wall; the sound of clashing swords and spears joining with the rumbling thunder to form the chorus of war.

One wraith slipped around Tarkus and the rest and barreled forward: right at Lautrec.

Lautrec shifted back into a defensive stance, yanked free his shotels, and

waited. The dark knight feigned a swing that Lautrec did not fall for and tried jabbing at his chest. The attack was one he'd faced a hundred times and knew just how to counter. His eyes followed the blade's approach. At the last moment before it pierced his chest, he hooked his shotel around and caught the flat of the weapon between the curve of his own. He twisted it back and up and the wraith screeched as its arms were awkwardly cast aside. Lautrec swung with his free shotel for the monster's head and-

-the wraith planted its boot into his stomach and thrust. Lautrec tumbled back, his shotels coming untangled from the wraith's sword, and caught his footing just as Quelana took hold of him.

The wraith pressed on them, but Quelana slipped around his shoulder, slapped her hands together at the wrists, and fanned her fingers. A pillar of flame scorched forth at once, and the wraith could do nothing but lift an arm in defense and backpedal to escape the blistering heat looking to smelt its armor right from its arm. Quelana did not relent. She stalked forth to keep the pressure on the creature and not allow it a moment's respite to retreat. It was Lautrec's turn then to slip around her shoulder, and when he had, he closed the gap on the half-blind knight and hacked into the thing's chestplate with both shotels as Quelana quelled her pyromancy. The wraith screeched as Lautrec traced two jagged wounds down its chest. Black blood oozed from within, and the creature fell to its knees a moment later, dead.

At the front of the wall, Ornstein had regained footing, and was working furiously at countering off the trio of wraiths fighting to hack him down. The Dragonslayer flattened his spear out, lowered his shoulder, and thrust himself into them with inhuman speed. The horizontal spear burrowed into the wraiths' bellies, and all four of the combatants went sailing beyond the edge of a nearby building.

Rickert and Patches were both engaged with a wraith of their own, and the black monsters had spread out around them and pressed the two back-to-back; Patches desperately working his spear in front of incoming strikes; Rickert dual-wielding a shortsword and catalyst in a barrage of counters. Neither looked able to keep up with the wraiths' relentless assault, but by the time their counters began to falter, Rhea had barreled up to the rim of the fighting and thrust her talisman out over them. Golden light, blinding and pure, raced from within the miraculous weapon. The wraiths stumbled back, swiping madly at the air around them due to their lack of sight, and Rickert and Patches took advantage of the moment to work their respective weapons into the knights' bellies.

Behind them, Ornstein returned: the trio of wraiths he'd been fighting did not. The Dragonslayer planted his spear into the ground and thrust himself upwards. He sailed the short distance to a nearby rooftop and landed in a crouch, sweeping his eyes down across the Firelink Shrine and the grounds surrounding it.

Lautrec did not need to ask what he was doing. "How many!?" He shouted up to the knight.

Ornstein shook his head. "Too many." He launched back down to the wall, landing in the sea of black that was pressing on Tarkus and Petrus. The three joined forces and fought the wraiths back, but when they were afforded a moment's respite, the Dragonslayer halted their advance and nodded backwards. "Fall in retreat," he commanded. "There are more coming than we can handle in such tight confines. If they swarm us, it's over."

"There ain't nowhere to fall back to!" Patches protested as a new wraith began stalking towards him with its sword angled forth. The Hyena grimaced and swatted at the thing.

"There!" Ornstein commanded. "A few rooftops back, the grounds widen out. We'll hold them at a chokepoint if they persist in this relentless assault. We-"

A wraith came scrambling up between the parapets at the Dragonslayer's rear, dug its black boots into twin footholds, and launched itself for the knight's back. It smacked into him, wrapping its dark arms around his neck and taking hold.

Ornstein wobbled but caught his footing, lowered his shoulder, and tried shaking the wraith loose. The creature tightened its grip with one arm, raised its other, and sent the hand alight with an eerie, pale, glow.

Lautrec had seen the attack before. The creatures possessed the nefarious ability to suck the soul and humanity right out of a man's body. He saw the attack coming then for the Dragonslayer. He stepped forward and launched his shotel horizontally across the gap. It went spinning forth and the tip burrowed into the Darkwraith's forehead, right between the thing's cavernous eyes. The wraith's mouth worked up and down soundlessly as if it had forgotten how to make noise, then black blood oozed from the newly-formedeye in the knight's brow and the creature slumped off the Dragonslayer's back.

Ornstein surveyed the carnage, the weapon, and-finally-bowed his thanks to Lautrec.

Rickert ripped the shotel loose and tossed it back to him just as a fresh torrent of wraiths came barreling out of the wall's hole.

"Fall back!" Ornstein commanded.

Most of them listened. Tarkus did not. The big man hammered a fist against his breastplate and swung his massive greatsword in an arch that sent every one of the wraiths leaping back to avoid its fury.

"Let's go, Cradlebreaker!" Rickert shouted.

"Come on, Tarkus!" Rhea added.

But Tarkus was too battle-fueled to pay them any heed. He roared a warcry and went hacking away at the wraiths as if they were as mindless and poor in combat as the hollows had been at the Archives. These things weren't, Lautrec knew, and the fool was like to get himself killed. He grabbed Petrus, who'd been the first and quickest to start in on retreating, and halted the heavyset man in his tracks. "Go help him," Lautrec commanded.

"Why me!?" Petrus asked indignantly.

"Because I said so. Go!" And without further hesitation, he thrust the pudgy man forth.

Petrus joined in at Tarkus' side and-perhaps for no other reason than lack of options-unsheathed his mace and deflected a swipe that just may have taken the big man's side. Tarkus went on swinging and jabbing and shouting at the wraiths until both Rickert and Rhea got hold of his arms and wrestled him back.

"Fall back!" Ornstein ordered again, this time pointing the tip of his spear to a rooftop a few buildings back the way they'd came. "Go now!"

They did. The wraiths continued funneling out of the shattered wall, but now, at least, they were funneling into an empty battleground. Lautrec kept hold of Quelana's hand to keep track of her as they raced back across the rooftop, over a short wooden bridge, and beneath a wide doorway that opened on a twist of stairs which would carry them to the Dragonslayer's retreat point. At those stairs, the spun in wait for the rest. Patches came scurrying through first, followed by Rickert and Rhea (who were still fighting and pleading with an adrenaline-fueled Tarkus between them). Petrus practically collapsed into the room, red-faced and winded, and only Ornstein remained outside.

Lautrec moved to the doorway and saw the Dragonslayer slowing the approach of the wraiths the best he could, but he was losing ground fast and the wraiths' numbers were only increasing. "You're no good to us dead!' Lautrec shouted at the knight.

Ornstein, perhaps hearing his words, slapped a final jab aside before turning in retreat.

When he worked his large frame in between the doorway, Lautrec caught one last glimpse of the pursuing force at their heels before turning and fleeing himself. The wraiths' were pressing on them like a relentless black cloud of oncoming death, and, eventually, he knew their fellowship would run out of room to retreat to.

And then what? He pondered as he took Quelana's hand again and joined her flight up the stairwell.

...then what?

(==========)

Solaire paced the charred and barren grounds that had once been the Parish chapel in tight strides. He gripped the hilt of his straightsword and worked his gauntlet-clad fingers over the thing in attempt to alleviate some of his anxieties, but it was a fight he was rapidly losing. From some faint corner of the Burg, he'd heard an explosion and knew at once: the fighting had began, and it had taken every bit of willpower within him not to go running off to join his friends in combat.

Where is the crossbreed? He thought, returning his eyes to the sky. He was not supposed to make a move on the Firelink Shrine until Priscilla had returned with word that the Darkwraiths had left it unoccupied. It was the right order, he knew-one that would ensure he didn't go waltzing off into some trap set by the mad sorcerer-but it was an order he was having a more and more difficult time following. He could not help but think of his friends suffering at the hands of those vile wraiths, and the image awoke an anger in him more profound than he would have thought possible.

With a pull of cold air and a steely determination to not let his emotions get the better of him, Solaire forced the images from his mind and resolved himself not to let them return.

It was after a few more minutes of tireless pacing when, at last, the crossbreed came.

Priscilla soared up over the top of the nearby building in the South and floated down before him; a seven-foot tall half-dragon in a wash of white hair and fur and wings and tail. Solaire hurried up to her and asked (more loudly than he'd intended), "My lady! What has happened! I heard an explosion! Are they alright?"

"They live," Priscilla answered; her soft, serene, tone standing in stark contrast to Solaire's own. "The Darkwraiths have brought the fight to the Burg. They press on your fellowship as we speak."

Solaire's eyes floated past her shoulder and onto the curved street that would take him to their aid: so close; so simple.

His desires must have been clear upon his face, for Priscilla quickly added, "Your place is not at their side, Knight Solaire. It is in the Kiln. It is killing Logan for what he's done to my father and the rest of this world. Yourrole is the savior of Lordran, not of its people."

He returned his eyes to hers and found the truth in them. With effort, he nodded his acquiescence. "Yes... yes, you're right. Thank you, my lady."

Priscilla's feral eyes narrowed onto his and when she spoke, it was with strength and determination: "Then go, knight. Go now. Go and right the wrongs of the human sorcerer who would see this world to darkness and suffering. Go and fight. Go and triumph."

Solaire was thankful for the crossbreed's words, but could not help return his eyes one last time to the Parish streets. "My friends... will you aid them?"

Priscilla's fangs bit gently at her lip as she looked to mull his question over. "I... I suppose I will. But not for the humans. For the kind witch, Quelana. ...and for you, knight."

Solaire bowed. "Then you have my thanks, Priscilla. Let us both make haste, and may the Sun shine soon on our triumphs."

The crossbreed returned the gesture, bent her knees, and leaped back into the skies; a trail of pebble and dust chasing briefly after her bare feet.

Solaire spun on his heel and raced to the indented wall that stood beside the now-blackened ruins of the chapel's altar. Two gated doorways peeked into a small, rectangular, compartment that tunneled down a maddening fall. The previous night, Rhea had worked tirelessly to fashion a 'rope' long enough to carry Solaire to its end from salvaged bits of blankets and drapery. The thing was pooled in a lump at his feet and fastened tightly to the bars of one of the gates. Solaire took it in hand, tugged a bit at the slack, and pressed the toes of his boots to the edge of the shaft. Leaning out, he peered down the fall. If there was an end to be seen, he did not see it, but time was against them, and caution was a privilege not afforded to those in need of urgency.

He wrapped his waist, turned, and leaped into the shaft.

The rope ran taught at once and Solaire's momentum carried his boots against the shaft's wall. He planted them, steadied himself, and pushed off, letting more of the slack slide through his gauntlets. A moment later, his boots found surface again, but he was quick to rappel himself once more.

And so he went: jumping and planting and jumping again, and with every leap he gained more courage, better timing, tighter precision, and by the time he stole a glance downwards, his destination was in plain sight. A pair of doorways, twins to those above, stood nestled at the wall behind him. He rappelled himself adjacent to the exit, crouched, and pushed off to swing across the gap and grab an edge of stone.

When his feet found solid ground once more, he untangled himself from the rope, stepped out of the shaft, beneath the doorway, and into the storm.

Helpless but to lift his eyes to the howling, screaming, mass of clouds

above, Solaire's breath caught in his chest. The storm had been an ominous and intimidating thing when looked upon from the Burg, but there standing right beneath its belly, staring up into the very heart of the storm itself, Solaire saw the truth in it that had, perhaps, been evading every one of them: this was no storm - this was a living, breathing, monster. Purple clouds stretched and swirled into a thousand eyes peering down at him; jagged hands of lightning reached for the earth; a gaping black mouth at the thing's center crackled with blue and yellow light and breathed cold death down upon the Shrine below it.

"Praise the Sun..." Solaire muttered. He needed to hear the words aloud; needed them more than ever.

A grumble of thunder meshed with a great tremble underfoot, and the primal growling was reminder enough of the lack of time they faced. Solaire swallowed his trepidation, shielded his brow from the beating rains, and made for the Kiln.

(=========)

Tarkus' greatsword clashed with a wraith's black blade. The rooftop rung with the metallic clang of steel-on-steel, and raindrops soared free from both weapons as they met. The wraith twisted its sword loose and swiped for the big man's stomach. Tarkus side-stepped the blow and countered with one of his own: a great, furious, overhead swing accompanied by a bellowing cry of fury. The wraith dodged-

-but not enough. Its left arm was caught in the greatsword's warpath, and a moment later it lied beneath it: Tarkus had severed the thing clean off.

The wraith stumbled back, black blood geysering from the nub of its shoulder, and went tumbling over a line of knee-high parapets to disappear to the streets of the Lower Burg below.

Tarkus hammered his chest and hurried off to join the Dragonslayer, who was tangled with a pair of wraiths across the roof.

Quelana had been watching the man, entranced by his sheer ferocity, but a clash of swords pulled her attention raptly back to the doorway at her flank. Rickert was backpedaling under the brutal assault of a wraith, swatting away what attacks he could. When the two neared, Lautrec shoved the young man aside, caught a downward strike of the wraith's blade, and riposted with a twist of his hips, burying one of his shotels into the thing's armor.

Two more wraiths came barreling up the stairs that adjoined the roof they'd fled to the roof they stood upon. When they breached the doorway, they narrowed their cavernous eyes on Lautrec and sent a joint flurry of jabs to press him back on his heels. Quelana made to assist him, but two

morerushed out behind the assault and drove on herinstead. She prepared her pyromancy, but Petrus and Rhea came to her aid before she'd awoken the first lash of flame from her fingertips; the former swinging his mace around in a two-handed grip; the latter keeping a miracle going at his back to grant the heavy man a boost in stamina.

The four of them went battling down down a sloped section of roof. With the threat, for the moment, neutralized, Quelana returned her focus to Lautrec, who was locked in combat with a pair of wraiths trying to get on his flanks. They spread wide enough that Lautrec could only dart his eyes back and forth between them, wary of which attack might come first. Quelana rushed to the rim of the scene and birthed a fireball into her waiting palm.

Either the sound or the heat pulled the wraith's attention her way, and Lautrec did not waste the opportunity. He lunged for one of their throats, dug a shotel in, and ripped it clean out. The second wraith charged for Quelana. She backed out of the way of a swing of its sword, wrenched back her arm, and doused the monster in a bath of flames. A shrill and hideous sound erupted from the mouthpiece of its skull-mask, but it did not last long: Lautrec had gotten on the thing's rear guard and adjoined his shotels up over its head. He drove them down into the back of its neck, and the Darkwraith never screamed again.

"Rickert!"

Tarkus' shout pulled both Lautrec's and her own eyes towards the smaller roof nestled against the large one they fought upon. There, Rickert had led a trio of wraiths down away from the fighting, but the young man was out of room, and the wraiths were tightening in around him like a black hand closing to a fist. Rickert's face was pallid and drawn in tight lines as he desperately swatted aside a jab and sidestepped another. The wraith's came tighter, though, and Quelana knew the young man would likely not be so lucky on the next strike.

She moved to aid him, but Tarkus had beaten her to it. The tower of black iron armor leaped through the air for the smaller roof, and for a moment he was silhouetted against the sky, and looked like one of the dark clouds above, crashing down to the earth. He landed behind a wraith, hooked an arm around the thing's neck, and ripped it backwards with such force, the wraith went spinning away off the edge of the roof at once. The other two looked to him, but Tarkus had already began an attack by then. He rushed them, swinging his greatsword as effortlessly as if it weighed nothing at all, and the wraiths were helpless but to retreat from his warpath.

With nothing she could do for the two, Quelana turned back to the roof. Her eyes found Lautrec behind her, but behind him a wraith was driving forth with the tip of its blade angled at his back.

"Behind you!" She wailed.

Lautrec spun back, but too late. The wraith was practically already on top of him, and Quelana saw, with utter dread, he did not have the time to counter the attack. The wraith lowered its shoulder, stabbed for his stomach, and-

-Patches barreled into the creatures side, sending the wraith's blade off course and, very likely, saving Lautrec's life. The bald man and the wraith went tumbling sideways and spilling to the ground. Patches was more agile, but the wraith was stronger. It worked its way atop the Hyena and grabbed for his throat, but by then, Lautrec had recovered, and when he swung his shotel for the line of the dark knight's shoulders, its head came clean off.

Patches scrambled out from under the corps and rose to his feet just as another wraith pressed on them. Together, he and Lautrec spread on the creature's flanks, closed in, and hacked at it till it stumbled backwards and vanished over the railing of a short wooden bridge.

The threat dealt with, Quelana saw the two men-her two kidnappers once, so long ago it felt like another life-look at one other, and in the brief and quiet moment that passed between them, she saw whatever animosity had lived in one man for the other vanish, and a look of acceptance rise in its place: in that moment, they were on even grounds once again.

Another rotation of a cycle complete, she thought as they came forth to join her.

The three of them joined beside Rhea and Petrus, who'd returned victorious from dealing with their own threat, and the lot of them looked out to the surrounding roofs. On one, the Dragonslayer was battling a pair of wraiths; the tall and imposing knight's spear tip alive with an orb of lightning as he parried a strike and jabbed the weapon forth. On the other, Tarkus and Rickert had finally managed to fight off the wraiths they'd been entangled with and were moving back for the main roof.

Quelana set her gaze South towards the front of the Burg, where the wraiths continued to pour endlessly from within their crumbling hole. When she returned her eyes to their own force and swept their faces, an unnerving realization washed over her: their fellowship was beginning to tire and fatigue, and the new wraiths coming shortly would be joining the battle without having used up not one bitof their own exertion.

"We have to keep falling back," she told Lautrec.  
"There's not time!" Rhea answered in his stead.  
"And there ain't nowhere to fall back to no more!" Patches added.

Quelana looked around and saw, unfortunately, they both had the right of it. The roofs ended at their backs and only the tall, spiraling, tower that wound its way up to the Burg's bridge stood in wait. And coming-always

coming-the wraiths would be swarming around them in far shorter time than it would take them to regroup, formulate a plan, and retreat anyway.

"Well what do we do!?" Petrus pleaded. The group's silence was its answer.

Is this it? Quelana found Lautrec's eyes and held them. He reached for her hand and squeezed.

"Crossbreed!" Rickert shouted as he and Tarkus joined up with the group. The young man's arm lifted, his finger extended skywards.

Quelana turned to follow the point, and, sure enough, found Priscilla sweeping down from the western horizon of towers and battlements. The dragon-woman's small wings folded in on themselves when she neared the roof the swarming wraiths were crossing. Her flight ended at once, and she went sailing into the midst of their ranks in a blizzard of white hair and fur. She landed with a thud and the wraiths fanned out around her at once, swords drawn and ready. They kept a wide berth and a cautious watch over the crossbreed, as if she were some deception sent upon them to catch them unaware and might burst into flame at any moment.

"What is she doing!?" Rhea asked.

But the priestess' answer came soon enough. Priscilla barred her fangs and swept her long-lashed eyes around the closing army of darkness. She hoisted her maddeningly long greatscythe up to her chest and roared like a feral beast who'd been cornered. One of the wraiths feigned a jab, another repeated the action, and then all at once they closed on her and-

-Priscilla disappeared.

The wraiths stumbled back, their hooded heads snapping about their shoulders, desperately seeking out the vanished crossbreed. Quelana narrowed her eyes onto the roof's ground and found the puddles of rain splashing, as if an invisible pair of feet were stomping through them. Then-

-one of the wraiths screeched as it lifted into the air and split clean in half from its crotch to its mask; the incision appearing to have been made by a great sword... or, more likely, a great scythe. The rest of the creatures spun on the sight and appeared entirely uncertain of what had happened or what to do about it.

Then another wraith's head lopped off its shoulders. Another was split in halves at the waist.  
Another lost both its legs.

Another was flung back over the line of the wall, as if by a great, great, force.

By then, the wraiths had launched into what Quelana could only think of as a frenzy. They were spinning rapidly on their heels, trying to keep vigilance over every inch of the roof to keep what had happened to their brethren from happening to them.

The invisible Priscilla went on hacking away, lopping off arms and legs and heads, and for one hopeful moment, Quelana believed the crossbreed was going to save them: truly and inexorably save them.

Then one of the wraiths saw what Quelana herself had seen: the splashing of the puddles. It narrowed its cavernous eyes onto the grounds, and before Quelana could voice warning, it jabbed.

Priscilla materialized at once with a wailing scream of anguish. Her stomach was filled with the Darkwraith's sword. The crossbreed pulled away from the wound, but another wraith pressed in on her immediately and jabbed into her side. She screamed again and hooked her scythe around for the attacker. Before it found its target, though, another wraith jabbed her back. Another stuck her thigh. Another hacked at her chest. And soon enough, the wraiths closed on the crossbreed, covered her up like a black blanket, and filled every inch of her with death. Priscilla roared one final cry of furious pain and then was silenced.

The sight was heartbreaking, and Quelana had to burry his face against Lautrec's shoulder till her sorrow passed.

"Gods..." Patches muttered. "Bastards," Rickert hissed.

With the crossbreed a threat no longer, the wraith army began funneling into the building adjoining the two roofs.

Ornstein yanked his spear from the dead creature at the end of it and faced the gruesome sight himself. He hesitated only briefly before shouting his order: "Fall back!"

"Fall back to where!?" Patches asked.

Ornstein pointed his spear towards the tower poking up out of the clutter of rooftops at their rear. "There! That tower! Go! Now!"

And so they did.

And as they fell back in retreat, the wraiths clipping at their heels, Quelana could only think: I hope we've bought you enough time, Solaire, for we are rapidly running out of it ourselves.

(========)

He slid down the long length of rope quickly, darkness and cold growing more prevalent and oppressive the closer he drew to its end. When finally Solaire's boots collided with the jagged rock that was the cavern's flooring, it had grown so black around him, he felt as if he'd been swallowed up whole by the ancient, slumbering, jaws of Lordran's most primordial beast: the Kiln of the First Flame.

He released the rope, swept a long look around the shadowed walls and gnarled trees that closed in around him, and stepped to the foot of a line of crumbling stone stairs. At their top, the Lordvessel sat fixed in a root- entangled altar, the Lord Souls within burning a queer, pale, light. Solaire climbed to it and gazed into the flames, but it was only briefly, as what lied beyondthem pulled his attention at once.

A thin wall of fog layered across a doorway stood in wait, and when Solaire stepped around the altar and narrowed his eyes into the thing, he could see a pathway snaking forth faintly beyond, wedged between the looming walls of a canyon. This is it, he thought, the final path to the Kiln... and to my father. The realization brought a profound sense of peace over him, for no matter what happened from then on, he'd made it: he would get the chance to save Lordran.

He pulled a breath, unsheathed his sword, and stepped through the fog.

A low hummmmm filled his ears as blinding, white, light stabbed his eyes, and Solaire was temporarily both blind and deaf. When his vision adjusted, though, and he was able to pry his eyelids apart, he saw he was, in fact, not deaf, but encased in a swirling tunnel of both black and white flashes. When he breathed, his lungs filled with a heavy air that tasted of copper. When he made to step forward, his legs felt made of pure iron. When he tried focusing his thoughts, they swam around his head, refusing the grip of his mind.

Ignoring it all, he soldiered forth. Walking through that brief stretch of ethereal tunnel felt like walking through a living manifestation of a dream, and when at last he breached the end, the haze lifted, stark clarity came across every one of his senses at once, and Solaire lifted his head to stare forth at the last leg of his journey.

The canyon walls hugged at his flanks in impossibly tall, jagged, sheets of wind-blasted rock. They narrowed down a long stretch of stone and sand and dirt, and beyond-looming up on the horizon encased in a red mist that swirled queerly and playing tricks on the eye-Gwyn's keep stood in wait.

Gripping his sword's hilt a bit tighter, Solaire marched forward to what he believed would be his final confrontation...

...and the decisive moment of Lordran's fate.

(=======)

They ascended the last stretch of the tower's spiraling staircase; each and every one of them winded and red-faced as the did so. The wraiths were close behind, but at the tower's bird's nest, Ornstein took up defensive stance at the stair's end and allowed them a moment's rest.

Quelana leaned against Lautrec's shoulder and when his arm wrapped her waist, she welcomed the comforting gesture. She had never ran as hard and fast as they had in flight from the wraith army. Lautrec brushed her hair aside and pulled deep breaths of his own, catching his wind and swiping sweat from his brow.

Tarkus was hurt. Rhea and Rickert had to aid his climb up the long flight of stairs, and so when the trio came breaching them last, the young man and the priestess practically collapsed to the floor as they released the big man. Tarkus lumbered to an overturned barrel at the room's far wall and plopped himself down. When he pulled his helm loose, the face beneath was sweaty and scrunched up in agony.

"What... happened... to you?" Rhea asked between breaths.

"Just got nicked," Tarkus explained, holding his side. "Bastard things... I just... need a moment here... a little rest to... catch my breath."

"You got 'nicked' because you were saving my ass, Cradlebreaker," Rickert pointed out. "I knew you cared," he added with a grin.

"Piss off, Rick," Tarkus retorted, but his smile betrayed his words.

"Crossbreed's dead," Patches said, leaning against his spear and running a kerchief across his bald head. "Those things killed her like she wasn't nothin'."

Poor Priscilla, Quelana thought, clutching a bit tighter to Lautrec.

"What do we do now!?" Petrus asked of the Dragonslayer. "We can't hold up in here for long."

"He's got the steps," Lautrec said, nodding to Ornstein. "It's a chokepoint that will slow them down. For now."

"Aye, but not for ever," Petrus went on. "And I'm not dying holed up in this tower like some... some rat in a cage!"

"Silence," Ornstein commanded. He was soft-spoken enough, but even then, one word sent the room quiet at once. They all listened. Below, the shuffling sounds of feet and the clanking of armor sounded. Ornstein fell

back on his heel and hoisted his spear up in wait. A few moments passed. Nothing came.

"The bloody hell are they doing down there?" Patches questioned.

"Perhaps they're, well, setting up a trap," Rhea suggested.

Rickert shook his head. "Nah. We'd have no reason to go back down. If anything, they're rigging the base of this tower up with firebombs like they did the Burg wall."

Rhea clasped her hands together. "Oh, Gods, I hope not."  
"We need to keep moving," Petrus said. "This is suicide."  
"Just hold your tongue until I figure out our next move," said Ornstein.

"Quelana," Lautrec called her quietly, tugging gently at her elbow. She allowed herself to be tugged, following him to a secluded corner of the tower. When he faced her again, his expression was sober and focused. "Listen to me: this is over."

"Over?"

"We've done what we can for Solaire. We've bought him the time he needs. There's no further point of risking your life. Either he'll defeat Gwyn and Logan and light the flames or he won't. Either way, we can still leave. I can get you out of here. Away from Lordran. Like... like your sisters wanted."

As she considered his words, her head spun with a million different scenarios and a million different outcomes, but her answer came clearly enough. "I...I can't, Lautrec. We can't. Not yet."

"Why!? How much more do you have to sacrifice before it's enough!?"

She was searching for answer to his question when Ornstein's voice saved her the trouble: "Alright, we're moving. I don't know what the wraiths are doing down there, but I have no intention of sticking around to find out. We'll fall back to the bridge and hold there. There's no room for ambush in such a place."

The room filled with the hustle and bustle of everyone preparing to head out; everyone but Lautrec, who only held those grey, steely, eyes on Quelana's own, awaiting his answer. She didn't have one, and instead stroked his cheek and kissed his brow. When she pulled away, he did not appear to be as easily placated by the gesture as he had last time she'd used it.

"We're moving out, let's go, Cradlebreaker," Rickert called to Tarkus as he tightened his belt.

Tarkus did not answer.

The young man looked to his big friend and Quelana followed his eyeline.

"No..." Rickert muttered, crossing to Tarkus, who was slumped back against the wall; his eyes closed; his mouth slightly agape. "Tarkus!" Rickert shouted, laying his hand on the man's shoulder to shake him awake. Only when he pushed, Tarkus did not wake: he slid sideways, slumped limply off the barrel, and fell to the floor. "TARKUS!"

Rhea slid to her knees beside the fallen giant and reached for his throat. It didn't take long for her comely face to wrinkle with sorrow. She lifted her gaze to Rickert and a tear rolled her cheek. "Rickert... he's gone."

"No," Rickert said with a shake of his head. "No! Get up, Tarkus! Get up you big bastard, get up!"

But Tarkus did not, and when Quelana saw the man's hands fall from the 'nick' he'd received on his side covered in thick, red, blood, she knew he never would.

Rickert's eyes flicked between the man's face and his stomach, his mind, perhaps, searching for some way to disprove the reality of what he was seeing. Then tears swelled in those eyes, and they could only hold on Rhea. The priestess took the young man in her arms and they both fell silent in respect for their fallen friend.

"Piss on this," Petrus muttered into the quiet first. He moved for the doorway leading to the strip of battlements connecting the tower's twin on the opposite side.

"You don't have my leave," Ornstein said calmly.

"I don't care," Petrus snapped, walked beneath the doorway, and-

-froze. The round man slowly turned back on the room, his jowls aquiver, his plump hands clasped at the apex of his plump belly. Blood oozed between his fingers. "Wraiths... coming," he croaked, closed his eyes, and collapsed to the floor like a tree fallen by an axeman's blow.

Panic took the room as every one of them scrambled to defensive positions. The Dragonslayer himself looked just to be readying to give command when another explosion rumbled beneath their feet, deeper in the tower, and before any of them could register what happened, an explosion took the room and the Darkwraiths were closing in on them.

From both above and below.

(======)

The Castle of the Lord of Cinder; Gwyn's keep, The Kiln of the First Flame. The monstrous tower of ancient stone Solaire stood before had gathered many names by many peoples of many different lands over the course of the history of the world, but looking upon it then in the shadow of its belly, a storm of red mists and crackling lightning brewing around its perched top like a swirl of poison, Solaire could only think of it in his own words. The oceans may have been Lordran's tears, the mountains its lofty shoulders, the forests its manes of hair, the Great Hollow the sturdy legs on which it stood upon, but the Kiln... the Kiln was Lordran's heart: beating and essential and alive.

...and waiting.

The cold winds swept through his hair and a great shift of rock from somewhere deep within the world's core sent the entire foundation he stood upon swaying and trembling. Solaire bent his knees to keep his footing till the tremor passed, and when it had, he pulled himself together, lifted his sword, and began the descent of a long, curving, flight of stairs that twisted their way down and in to the Kiln.

As he walked amidst the winds and the mists, he had trouble forming up his thoughts. The events he stood on the cusp of were bigger than him, bigger than perhaps anything Lordran had ever faced, and the enormity and importance of the coming moments acted as a sort of suppressive blanket upon his thoughts. Solaire could conjure images though. In fact, they were coming quite clear in his head in rotation, like a circle; like a cycle. He saw the faces of those he'd walked beside in his travels and endeavors, the very faces of those who had fought and sacrificed to get him there. He saw Quelana and Lautrec and Abby. He saw Tarkus and Rickert and Rhea and Domhnall and Andre and Anastacia. He saw their faces, steely and determined, and though he might have been physically alone, in that moment, Solaire had never felt more surrounded by support; by friends.

And lastly, he saw the Sun. It wasn't in the sky, but it waswatching over him all the same. As it always had; as it always would.

The stairs ended and the keep began: a long, looming, wall of black stone that stretched so high into the mists above, the apex could not be seen. Lightning chewed the keep's battlements; thunder cooked the dead sky. A layer of fog, much heavier and opaque than the one before the canyon, blanketed the entrance. As Solaire looked upon it, the realization came across him that it would be the last fog he'd ever pass through.

The notion did not slow him in the slightest, however, and he pressed into the gate of fog at once.

The sight which filled his eyes on the other side was not what Solaire had been expecting. The Kiln was not a God's throne room adorned in elaborate design and eloquent decoration, but a dark and cavernous

chamber, with a dozen shadowed corners hiding behind tendrils of pointed rock dripping from the cave's top. The earth was brown and drab and stretched onwards into the chamber, falling towards a central, sloped, point in the room's core, but what might lie withinthat core was hidden behind a wall of protruding, jagged, rocks.

Solaire's chest hurt, and it was only then he realized he'd been holding his breath. When he filled his lungs with the cool, crisp, air that seemed to be circulating through the cavern from the shadowed walls themselves, he scanned his vision across the chamber in search of something, or someone.

The first remarkable thing they fell upon was a small, waist-high, cage of bamboo and wood nestled near to the wall of fog beside an enormous rock. When he narrowed his eyes beyond the cage's bars, his mouth came agape and Solaire rushed forth at once. "Abby!"

He slid to a knee beside it and peered in. Sure enough, Abby was laying sprawled out, face-down, on the floor of the prison. There was a great pool of congealed blood beneath her stomach. Gods have mercy on this child, Solaire thought as profound sorrow gripped his chest. "Abby..." He called again, softer. When the girl did not stir, he feared the worst had happened: Abby of Vinheim was no more.

Something stirred at the opposite end of the cage. Solaire squinted into the darkness and found, what he believed for one, disorienting, moment, was Patches the Hyena. Only when the hideously burned and scarred bald man's eyes moved to his own and Solaire focused his vision, he realized it was not Patches, but Ben.

"Benjamin?"

Ben's hands cupped around his mouth and shook violently. A grating sound slipped between his fingers that might have been laughter.

"Benjamin, where is Logan?"

Ben's lips curled to either a sneer or a smile, revealing a row of broken, yellowed, teeth. He picked at a scabbed patch of flesh over his cheek and darted his tongue across his bloodied lips.

"Where is Logan!?" Solaire demanded again.

Ben's answer came quiet and almost reverent: "Everywhere."

Soft laughter rumbling through the cavern behind him pulled Solaire to his feet at once, spinning back on his heel with his sword drawn in defense.

Nothing was there but the shadows.

"Logan!" Solaire shouted into the dark. The answer that came in return was his own voice, echoing queerly back to him from the cave's lofty ceiling. He swallowed into a throat that had run dry, lifted his sword a bit higher, and stalked forth: slow and quiet and alert. His eyes moved to every nook and every shadow as he walked, his mind shrewdly picking apart every slight movement or noise he detected.

Deeper he pressed towards the chamber's center, and still Logan had not revealed himself. Solaire shouldered his way around a half-shattered stone pillar, stepped to the side of a jagged line of rocks, and laid his boots upon a sloped fall of earth that raced down to the chamber's center

Awaiting him were two things: the Kiln's bonfire, a small flame waning down to practically nothing in its core... and the Lord of Cinder himself.

Solaire could only muster one word. "...father."

(=====)

As panic and chaos and death swirled all around them in a storm of madness, one thought rung stark and clear in Lautrec's head, and he clung to it dearly: Get Quelana to safety.

A Darkwraith charged him with its blade thrust forward like a joust. Lautrec hooked his shotel around it and wrenched sideways. The wraith's course was thrown off, and the creature went barreling into the tower wall. Another two came rushing in through the doorway leading to the battlements, but it was Quelana's turn to deal with the threat. She stepped around his shoulder and hurled a blistering ball of fire into their path. The wraiths tried halting their rush, but ended up sliding into the fiery death anyway; the armor on their legs smelting and grafting to whatever hideous flesh or bone might lie beneath.

A moment's respite, Lautrec craned his head around to the other side of the room, where the wraiths had detonated another string of firebombs, and were crawling up from-what Lautrec thought looked like-the room bellow their own to swarm and murder the remains of their fellowship. Priscilla was dead. Tarkus was dead. Petrus was dead. Both Rickert and Rhea had been caught unaware in the explosion and laid in one another's arms, half-dead, and only Patches, the Dragonslayer, Quelana, and himself remained in fighting condition.

Get Quelana to safety, his inner voice roared into his head again and Lautrec acted on it at once. He snatched Quelana's wrist, turned, and pulled her out to the the battlements and the winds and the rains. Faintly, he heard her shout a protest, but he was far past the point of listening to them. He was going to save her life: whether she liked it or not.

Upon the battlements, a squadron of wraiths was driving on the tower from the opposed one. Lautrec cursed and drew up his shotels, no choice then but to release Quelana's wrist and hope she had the sense not to throw her life away in the brief moment of freedom. Fueled by the desire to cut a path through the black army and see her to safety, Lautrec roared a warcry and moved forth to meet the wraiths in combat.

The first swung for him. He ducked to his side and had to immediately swat away the jab of another. A third pressed between the first two's shoulders, thrusting its blade down upon him in a two-handed grip, but Lautrec backpedaled from under its perimeter, deflected another swing from the first wraith, and fell back in retreat again when a fourth lunged for him.

He grit his teeth and glared across the gap at the creatures, furious and frustrated at his inability to get so much as a single blow in on oneof them, let alone cut one down. The half-dozen wraiths stalked forth, black blades angled at his chest. Lautrec tightened his fists around the hilts of his shotels and took a step forward to meet them again in combat-

-but Quelana slipped around his shoulder, faced him, and pressed her body tightly up against his.

"What are you-!?" He'd managed to shout before the witch's eyes closed and her hands lifted up to her sides and he was suddenly confused as to her actions no longer.

Just as the wraiths closed on her back, Quelana summoned forth a rising cascade of flaming pillars, searing up from Izalith itself to pierce and burn and melt the wraiths in the chaotic dance of her most potent pyromancy: the Firestorm.

The flames took to the wraith's black hoods, and just like that there were half-a-dozen dark knights with orbs of fire adorned over their heads instead of helms. They screeched the helpless, shrill, wails of a group of beasts facing their inevitable demise, and a moment later, the battlements were littered with six corpses and six blackened and charred heads.

Lautrec could only stand staring into the emerald wells of Quelana's eyes as they slowly came open. They were the prettiest things he'd ever looked upon, and if-somehow-he hadn't known it before, he most certainly knew it then: he loved her. He'd, perhaps, never loved anything in his whole life, but he loved her. The truth of it was lying there plainly enough in her soft eyes; simple and pure and true. He wanted to live there within them; wanted to live there and never leave.

His reverie was snapped by the clash of steel-on-steel at his back. He spun with his shotels raised to protect Quelana and found both the Dragonslayer and Patches backpedaling on their heels as they worked tirelessly to deflect the barrage of strikes the wraiths were sending at

them. Patches was not nearly the warrior Ornstein was, though, and before they'd so much as cleared the doorway, the Hyena missed a jab. It pierced his arm and Patches threw his head back in agony. Ornstein looked to try and defend the man, but the wraiths were pouring relentlessly out from the tower then, and the Dragonslayer had to leave the Hyena behind. Patches was buried in a sea of black a moment later and his shouting ran silent.

Quelana slipped from behind Lautrec to join the lion-helmed knight in combat, but Lautrec caught her by the arm again and pulled her back to him. When she faced him and looked ready to voice protest, he drowned her out by shouting, "Dragonslayer!"

Ornstein's head cocked slightly back as he kept his spear at chest-height in defense of the army of wraiths pouring out of the tower and driving on him.

"Listen to me!" Lautrec began. "Solaire is your Lord! Well, Quelana is your Lord's good friend! Buy me time, Dragonslayer! Buy me time to see her from the certain death those things would bring upon her! Hold them back so that I can get her away from here and she might yet live!"

Ornstein hesitated only a moment before offering a slight nod of his head. By then, the wraiths had closed the gap on him, and his spear lifted to tangle with their swords.

Quelana bore her beautiful eyes angrily into his own, but Lautrec only reached for her cheek and softly stroke it. "Please, Quelana... there is nothing more you or I can do here any longer."

He saw the conflict cross her face; the clashing ambivalence of a heart's desire to fight on and a mind's logic that there was no point. After a moment, her acquiescence finally came. "Alright, Lautrec... alright."

He needed no further assent. He grabbed her arm, spun on his heel, and raced them off across the battlements to the tower waiting on the opposite side. When they reached it, he checked the interior to make sure it was safe. It was, and he ushered Quelana in at once. Lautrec himself spun back one last time to the battle brewing between the jagged lines of the walls' parapets.

The image was partially obscured by the rains-which were growing faster and more dense by the moment-but Lautrec could see enough, and thought it was an image worthy of the legendary tales told of the Dragonslayer. Ornstein was fighting the wraiths with inhuman speed and boundless energy. Their swords wanted to rain down upon him beside the storm, but the knight's spear spun and twisted and jabbed and thrust and not one of the blows could find his armor. Lautrec saw one wraith go flying over the parapets. Another came alight with a lightning-tipped spear thrust. Two more were hacked down by an overhead swing.

Ornstein fought as valiant as a knight could, but Lautrec saw the numbers beginning to overwhelm the Dragonslayer, and knew then it was time for retreat. He turned, found Quelana's hand once more, and rushed into the tower; the sounds of Ornstein's last stand ringing faintly behind them.

They took the twist of stairs within in leaps and bounds, found level footing, and raced back outside into the storm. Before them, the Burg's main bridge stretched back to the Altar of Sunlight. They raced across it, his boots and her bare feet splashing in the growing puddles of rain, and at the halfway point, halted. There, the wooden stairwell that would carry them down into the Burg's streets lie in wait. Lautrec glanced back only briefly and found, thankfully, nothing yet coming after them.

They descended the stairs, crossed through a small room, and found another fall of steps-stone instead of wood-cornering down to a dead bonfire. The stairs ended premature, so Lautrec jumped down to the room's flooring (ignoring the painful way his ankle twisted as he landed), spun back, and caught Quelana in his arms as she leapt after him.

Beneath an archway they crossed and back into the storm they went and-

-a trio of Darkwraiths were bounding there way from the direction of the Firelink Shrine.

Lautrec cursed, but Quelana acted. She ran forth to a short bridge adjoining the rooftop to a smaller building, and with their hands still clasped, Lautrec followed along behind her. They crossed the thing-the wraiths picking up speed in pursuit at their rear-passed through the building, and were readying to take a flight of stairs up and around when three more wraiths came bounding down them.

Quelana and himself slid to a halt atop the rain-slicked stone, but by the time they turned back, the otherthree wraiths had filled the doorway behind them. Lautrec pulled his shotels loose and snapped his head back and forth between the two closing squadrons, but a dreadful realization washed over him: he could not win; not against six wraiths.

Desperate for an escape route, his eyes found a wooden door nestled into an indentation within the building at their rear. He grit his teeth and sounded a primitive roar as he lowered his shoulder and flung it against the door. The thing's hinges cracked on the first thrust, splintered on the second, and finally gave on the third, and then he was pulling Quelana into the building after him to escape the wraiths that had, by that time, closed on their position.

Lautrec led her through a room that might've once been a kitchen, under a doorway, and-

-into a dead end.  
"No!" He growled furiously.

"Lautrec," Quelana's shout called his attention back her way.

Lautrec spun and found the wraiths rapidly choking off the exit behind them. He grabbed for Quelana's arm, yanked her around behind him, and raised his shotels in defense, backing her up to into the room's corner to keep the monstrous army from harming her.

"Get back!" He roared, that familiar burn of rage heating his blood and making his fingers itch. "Get back you bastards! BACK!"

His shouts did nothing to slow the wraiths from stalking forward, blades raised.

"Lautrec..." Quelana's voice came softly over his shoulder, and he heard the indistinguishable sound of defeat within.

He ignored her. "Listen to me!" He pleaded with the wraiths instead, coming to the realization his options had all but run out. "Let her walk away! Do you hear me!? You let her walk out that door and I'll lay my blades down! You don't have to risk injury or death or-or anything! I will lay my blades down if you let her live! Do you HEAR me, you bastards!?"

"Lautrec..."

"What!?" He spun around to face her angrily.

But Quelana did not look angry in the slightest, and it quelled his own fury at once. She did not look sad, either. Nor did she look confused. She only wore the expression of one who had come to some profound understanding of the situation that he, clearly, had not. Her arms lifted and her hands fell atop his own. Gently, she guided them down to his sides, lowering his shotels in the process.

"Quelana-!? What are you-"

Her answer was a kiss on his lips: soft, warm, wonderful. His eyes had closed involuntarily under the spell of that kiss, but when their lips parted and he opened them again, he thought perhaps he better understood that knowing look dwelling deep within the green pools of her pretty eyes; eyes that he wanted nothing more than to live in forever.

It was the look of acceptance.  
He held her gaze as tears came upon both of them.

He allowed his shotels to drop to the floor so he could wrap her in his arms instead.

The wraiths shuffled closer in behind them, but it didn't matter any longer.

For in one another's embrace: everything in the world was alright.

(====)

The frail thing Solaire knelt beside could not have been further from the glorious, hulking, warrior all Lordran's finest artists had depicted in their countless paintings and drawings, sculptures and statues, dedicated to his worship and celebration. Either they had been a lie, or they had become one, for the truth lied plain enough before him: Gwyn resembled a man, nothing more, and a dying man at that.

The Lord of Cinder was little more than skin and bones upon the Kiln's cold, rock, floor. When he pulled breath, his sallow and liver-spotted skin hugged his ribcage. Adorned on his shoulders and waist, tattered robes that closer resembled rags hung listlessly around his thinning frame. His hands and feet were dirty and bare. Atop his head, a rusted and decaying crown clung dearly to his wrinkled brow. Below, an aged and haggard face poked out amidst the sea of a greying beard; framed by hair hanging just as limp and dead. The narrow-set eyes above his long nose were closed to slits, and crow's feet blossomed around the corners.

Solaire stared upon him for a long time before mustering the ability to speak. "...father?"

Gwyn's eyes raised to half-mast and no more. Around the two of them, a cold wind seemed to awaken alongside the fallen God. It swept the small confines of the cavern's center, sending the withering bonfire flames writhing-as if in pain-and their shadows leaping to the rocks clustered around the perimeter.

Gwyn's gaze floated to Solaire's own and appeared to try and focus. It did not seem as if they could, however, and a moment later they lowered to slits once more.

"Father," Solaire tried again, laying his hand on the frail shoulder of the Lord of Cinder and giving him a gentle shake.

Gwyn groaned like a very old dog being roused from a very long slumber. With effort, his eyes came open again and found Solaire. "No..."

"No?"

"...no... children..." Gwyn croaked, lifting a bony finger in Solaire's direction. "No son."

Solaire took hold of the God's hand-softly so as not to harm it-and said, "You do have a son, though. For I am him, father. I am Solaire. I... I am your firstborn."

Gwyn's brow creased ever-so-slightly and when he spoke again, it seemed to carry a bit more energy. "Solaire?" The two held one another's eyes a

moment before Gwyn's face contorted into a sneer. "Human lover."

Solaire knew it was meant as a slight, but he lifted his chin and nodded his head with pride all the same. "That's right, father."

One of the dying God's arms raised, and the slender fingers at the end of it grasped and loosened and grasped again, beckoning Solaire near. Solaire shifted a bit closer to the Lord of Cinder so that Gwyn cold drape his arm around his shoulder. When he had, the God pulled himself closely to Solaire's face. He smelled of death. Cracked lips curled away from browning teeth as he hissed, "I - have - no - SON!" And with that, he pursed his lips and spit in Solaire's face.

Solaire recoiled, dropping Gwyn back to the rocky floor of the Kiln as he rose to his feet. He lifted his hand, swiped the spit clean from around his eye and nose, and stared down upon the fallen God, whose contemptuous sneer had returned twice as scornful.

Somewhere deep within Solaire, from some recessed cavity of his very soul, a child cried out. A child that, perhaps, believed with youthful naivety that when he found the father he never had, the man might hold him, tell him he loved him, tell him he was proud of him. A child that had longed for a childhood; a child that had never properly received one. But Solaire was used to silencing the boy that lived within him, and he did so then, for what was needed in that moment was not the boy, but the man... and the knight.

He unsheathed his straightsword and pressed the tip to Gwyn's chest.

Gwyn's sneer did not falter in the slightest.

"How could you say that to me?" Solaire asked. "You abandon me and... you rob me of a childhood, of parents, of any semblance of love or care... and now you deny my existence even as I stand before you? What kind of father would do such a thing to his child?"

Gwyn glared; nothing more.

Solaire held the fury in his father's eyes and came to a realization. If he struck the God down then, he would be no better than the Lord of Cinder himself. He lowered the tip of his sword and said, "You hold no love for me. That much is clear. And I suppose I hold none for you. ...but I will show you mercy, father." He pointed his sword back towards the fog gate. "Go. Gather what's left of yourself and walk out of here. Crawl if you have to. I don't care. Your time is over, father. Lordran needs a new keeper of the flame to save it from the darkness that stands at its doorstep... and that keeper is me. So go. Go and salvage what remains of your sad existence."

Gwyn's eyes moved to the fog gate, to the bonfire, back to Solaire. He did not move.

"Go," Solaire repeated.

Gwyn laid his head back and a choked, rhythmic, sound rumbled from his emaciated chest that might have been the God's attempt at laughter. "Craven boy. No... son of... mine."

Solaire denied his anger to rise, and asked calmly instead, "You refuse then?"

"...I refuse."

Solaire pulled a breath. He knew the words that needed to be said would not come easy. Still, he made them come all the same. "So be it. Then I, Solaire of Astora, Knight of Sunlight, Deliverer of Justice," he narrowed his eyes onto Gwyn's, "Lover of humans... I sentence you to death, Lord Gwyn."

He thrust his blade for the fallen God's throat and-

-halted when the tip met flesh. Gwyn hadn't moved-hadn't even budged- and for some reason, that reawakened Solaire's sympathy for the man that might have once been his father. He lowered the sword and sighed. "Fine... if you refuse to defend yourself and you won't walk out of here... then I shall carry you out."

He lowered himself to cradle his father's shoulder in the nook of his arm. Gwyn appeared to be resting and docile until the very last moment, when Solaire was right above him, and the Lord of Cinder's face contorted with rage. He reached behind his back for a sword that had been hidden away, and when he plunged it for Solaire's belly, the blade was alive with flame. Solaire hadn't sheathed his own sword, however, and at the very last moment, before the God's fiery death entered his stomach, was able to parry the strike.

He riposted a thrust of his own in return: a knight's instinct. It found the Lord of Cinder's throat.

Gwyn's mouth gaped; his breath choked off; blood seeped between his teeth.

The flaming sword fell from his liver-spotted hand. The anger waned and died away in his eyes.  
...and then the God waned and died away himself.

Gwyn collapsed to the floor of the Kiln, dead, and at once, the tiny embers that had been clinging to life in the heart of the bonfire faded to blackness, and a great, thunderous, rumble filled every inch of the cavern so ferociously, Solaire nearly lost his footing.

By the time he regained it, movement back towards the fog gate caught his eye.

Logan had finally revealed himself. The mad sorcerer was working furiously to drag Ben out of his makeshift cage and towards the fog.

"LOGAN!" Solaire shouted and moved to stop him-

-but two Darkwraiths stepped out of the shadows, unsheathed their swords, and cut off his advance. They closed in on him quickly as Logan dragged Ben along behind them, towards the fog, and towards the great, chaotic, darkness that would follow if the mad sorcerer were successful... and bring about the end of all things.

(===)

From somewhere deep, deep, within the earth, the most violent tremble Lordran had experienced yet came barreling up to the surface, shaking the very foundation of the building Lautrec stood in with Quelana clutched tightly in his arms. The two nearly spilled to the ground till he planted his hand against the wall and pressed Quelana up against it to steady them and keep her safe. The tremble last for far longer than any he'd felt as well, and when it finally waned away in a series of sporadic fits, there was a change in the air-a coldness; a thickness-and Lautrec did not think it was simply because of the Darkwraiths at their backs.

When he turned to face the black death that had been creeping on them, however, they were no longer there.

Quelana moved beside him and slipped her arm around his own. When their eyes met, he found an expression of incredulous awe on the witch's face that he must've been wearing himself, for Quelana said at once in a hushed tone, "What has happened, Lautrec?"

He swallowed in a throat that had turned barren and coarse and shook his head. "I... I don't know." His eyes found the doorway. " But I might have an idea. Come on."

They headed into the building's empty kitchen area, moved through with the slow, cautious, pace that accompanied those too uncertain to move any quicker, and stepped back outside through the doorway.

There they found the wraiths: lined up in a long, black, row; each and every one of them lowered to one knee; their heads leaned back; their eyes fixated on the sky in the South, on the swirl of purple clouds that now twisted at maddening speeds into a vortex of lightning and darkness over the Firelink Shrine. Another rumble bellowed beneath their feet and a cluster of buildings in the East toppled over at once. Lightning crackled down upon them. Thunder roared. The wind and rains came as furiously

and tenaciously as if they might never get the chance to come again.

When Lautrec faced Quelana, he could only think of one thing to say: "Gwyn is dead."

As she stared at the storm in the South, twin reflections of blue and yellow lightning flashed in her eyes. When she turned them on Lautrec, her understanding was plain enough to see. "Yes... it is done then."

"Come on," he said, taking up her hand once more. "It's over now, Quelana. It is over. We can leave. We can find that boat of your sisters and finally truly, leavethis God-awful world behind. Come on!"

Without waiting for reply, he pulled her along, past the line of kneeling wraiths, and towards the wall that ended the Burg and started the Firelink Shrine.

The storm beat down upon them more and more aggressively as they ran, but Lautrec would not have his spirits so easily broken, not then, not with the end so close in sight. With the adrenaline of combat quelled, though, the ankle he'd twisted fleeing the wraiths earlier was throbbing and screaming at him to give it a rest, but he ignored the pleads and went on pulling Quelana towards the shore as fast as his legs would take him.

They came to the wall at the end of the Burg and Lautrec led them down the gaping, shattered, hole the wraiths had birthed in it with their firebombs. The tunnel twisted them down and around and spit them out onto the soft, muddy, grounds of the Firelink Shrine. The sounds of that queer vortex in the sky were deafening then, but Lautrec figured it mattered not: they were almost gone. So close he could practically feel the waves waiting to take them away beneath his feet.

The two of them sprinted past the Firelink Shrine and took the fall of stairs in the cemetery beyond to a cliffside overlooking New Londo, and in the South: the velvety blue carpet of Lordran's great ocean sprawled out in wait.

Alright, Lautrec thought, sweeping his eyes down over the cliff to the shoreline. Where is it? You told me it was here. Where is it? Where!? For a dreadful moment, he thought Quelana's eldest sister might have lied to him about the whole thing, but just as he was readying to voice his concern, his eyes found it: a small, white, curved boat-just big enough for the two of them-resting within an alcove nestled against the cliffside.

"Quelana!" He shouted to be heard over the intense winds and thunder brewing just overhead. "It's there! Your sisters told it true! The boat is there!"

But when he turned back to her, Quelana's eyes were not on the boat, but held skywards at the twist of clouds tunneling down, seemingly, right into Lordran itself.

"Quelana!' He shouted, grabbing for her arm.

"Something's wrong!" She returned, pointing towards the sky. "If Gwyn is dead, why is the storm still brewing? Why is the sky still blackening? Why are the tremors still coming?" She spun to face him; harsh winds beating against her comely face and sending her ravenous hair whipping across her eyes. "Lautrec, why hasn't Solaire lit the bonfire yet!?'

Thunder growled furiously across the sky.

"It doesn't matter!" He shouted when its deafening cry had silenced. "Come on! We have to go! It's over, Quelana!"

Her eyes moved from his own, to the storm, and back. Before she'd even said a word, he knew what was coming. "We can't! Not yet! Solaire might need us! We have to go back! We have to enter the Kiln!"

"Quelana, no!'

"We have to! For Lordran! For everyone who has sacrificed themselves! There's no choice to be made, Lautrec! We must go to the Kiln! Please! Follow me!"

"Quelana!"

But she'd already slipped from his grasp and spun back towards the Firelink Shrine.

Lautrec made to chase after her and grab her, but when he put weight on his ankle, pain bolted up his leg and fell him to a knee in the muds. He winced, fought through the agony, and clambered to his feet.

By then, though, Quelana had already disappeared around the top of the stone stairs leading to the grounds of the Kiln's entrance.

Lautrec glanced one more, longingly, at the little white boat waiting to take them from Lordran before limping after her; a feeling of utter dread stirring in the pit of his stomach.

(==)

The wraith on his left flank feigned a blow at the same time the wraith on his right flank actually sent one towards him, and Solaire just barely managed to swat it aside. He fell back on his heels as the two dark knights came barreling down on him with a barrage of strikes. He caught one atop his shield, deflected another off the flat side of his sword, side-stepped a third, batted away a fourth. The wraiths did not waver, did not tire, did not relent, and Solaire could only fight with everything he had left in him to combat their tenacity. A voice deep within his head questioned, however, how long he could exert himself before he faltered, and one of

the blows got through. The voice was doubt, though, and doubt did no good for a knight. He quelled it at once. He fought on.

The Kiln rumbled again, and with the rumbling came a violent fall of rocks from the cavern's walls and ceiling. What little slated flooring peeked out from beneath the earth was shattered to bits as the heavy rain of rock collided against it, and a shower of debris geysered the air.

Solaire only had a fleeting moment to regain his footing after the tremor, for the wraiths were pressing their assault again the very moment it tapered off. Distantly, beyond the line of their shoulders, he saw Logan still struggling desperately to drag young Benjamin to the fog gate. Ben, to the boy's credit, was doing what he could to fend the sorcerer off, even in his state of scarred and burnt disfigurement. Whatever Logan had done to him-Solaire assumed it was the sorcerer himself who'd burned the boy-it seemed to turn the Ben's hatred on him in full force.

A sword pierced for his eyes. Solaire leaned back and slapped it away with his own blade. The wraiths spread on his flanks, trying to pull his attention one way or the other, but Solaire darted between them, leaped over a fallen pile of debris, and spun back to keep them in his line of sight. They pooled around the debris themselves to crash in on him again, but another tremendous quake underfoot sent all three of them swaying to keep footing.

The back wall of the cavern crumbled and a web of cracks splintered up its belly. The ceiling near to it rained another shower of rock loose and Solaire had just enough time to think, How much longer will this chamber hold together?, before the wraiths were on him again.

They clashed swords; the sounds of steel-on-steel joining the primal groaning and moaning of the earth as another sporadic burst of tremors rumbled. Solaire thought he'd finally found an opening in one of the wraith's defenses, but when he made to jab at it, the second creature kicked at his ribs and sent him crashing to the floor.

He slid back amidst the smattering of rock and debris that seemed to float now a foot from the ground itself; the constant shaking was keeping them leaping and hopping from place to place. Briefly, he turned his gaze towards the fog gate, where Logan had nearly succeeded in dragging Ben out of the Kiln.

I have to stop him, Solaire thought as he clambered to his feet, but when he moved towards the mad sorcerer, the wraiths were in his path again at once, shielding the way. He tried putting some distance between the knights to buy himself the time to conjure a lightning spear, but the wraiths simply would not afford him such spacing. They kept tight on him, pressing and jabbing and feigning and striking, and with every blow countered, every blow avoided, every blow fallen atop his shield, Solaire felt his stamina whittling away to nothing.

Finally, a thrust came against his sword that was too much for him to handle, and Solaire's weapon was knocked loose from his hand. He moved for it, but the cavern took on a violent shake just at that moment and he ended up spilling to the floor. Faintly, he heard Logan scream something furiously, then he spun onto his back and found the two wraiths spreading across his vision like a black cloud, their swords angled down at his chest.

Praise the Sun, Solaire thought, praying for its mighty strength to somehow aid him.

But it was not the Sun that came to his aid: it was Quelana.

Flames wrapped the wraiths in searing orange and red tendrils, and the creatures wailed in agony as their arms pinwheeled and their hoods caught fire. Quelana pressed on them with her pale hands joined at the wrists, spearing a pillar of flame to back them away from Solaire's fallen position. The twin knights screeched and tried escaping the attack, but Quelana's flames were powerful and ubiquitous and intense, and the wraiths had nowhere to go but into the tunnel of fiery death she was casting over them.

As grateful for Quelana's unexpected aid as he was, Solaire returned his attention at once to Logan. The sorcerer's cloak was alight with fire- Quelana must have gotten him too on her way in-but he'd extended his catalyst out and cast some queer sorcery over it to quell the flames. His face lined with fury and determination, Logan reached for Ben's arms and began dragging the boy the last bit of the way to the fog gate.

Solaire clambered to his feet, retrieved his sword, and rushed to stop him.

The cavern shook with such relentless vigor, a part of the flooring splintered apart and sunk down in on itself to disappear into a black void. Solaire leaped it and kept charging.

Logan climbed the steps leading to the fog, Ben in tow being dragged along behind.

"Logan!" Solaire bellowed, hoisted his arm overhead to conjure a spear of lightning, and thrust it forth.

Logan, perhaps with some unnatural sorcerer's gift of awareness, turned around to face the spear just as it was about to pierce his back. His mad eyes came briefly alight with the yellow bolt before he grit his teeth and leaped into the air. The lightning slapped uselessly off the cavern wall and dissipated in a cloud of dust.

Logan landed beside a pillar and flicked his eyes furiously to Benjamin lying beside the stairs before slipping around the thing and into the shadows.

"Logan!" Solaire shouted, but by the time he'd shouldered around the pillar himself, Logan was not there, and only the shadows greeted him. He narrowed his eyes down the dark wall of the trembling chamber and spotted movement snaking away in the blackness. He charged after it. "It's over Logan!" He called after the sorcerer, sidestepping a massive rock that shook loose from the ceiling and splashed at his feet into a thousand shards. He reached the end of the wall, and still had only caught more shadows. Anger gripped his chest but he refused it any further control of his actions. "Where are you, Logan! Show yourself!"

"Here," a voice whispered, seeming to drip insidiously out of every inch of the darkness that encased him.

Solaire spun towards the point he'd thought he heard it originated from and rushed forth. The cavern's trembling continued the maddening climb up its violent crescendo to the point that Solaire had to pause every few steps to regain his footing.

"Here I am," the voice hissed in the darkness again.

Solaire spun around and saw movement back towards a pillar he'd passed. He returned to it at once, his shield held protectively before him, his sword at the ready. When he reached it, however, and found nothing once again, he was readying to simply return to Ben and ensure the young man would not leave the chamber when the insane sound of Logan's snickering caught his ear faintly from around a nearby pillar.

"Here."

Solaire had no intentions of letting the mad sorcerer escape him again. He lunged around the wall of stone with his sword tip angled forth-

-and sunk it directly into Quelana's chest.

"No!" He cried out at once.

Quelana's mouth came agape and her eyes lowered to her pierced chest incredulously, where Solaire's sunlight blade was buried nearly to the hilt within. When she lifted her gaze back to him, every inch of her pretty face was filled with pure agony. She stumbled into his arm.

"No. This cannot be," Solaire said, taking her weight against him and brushing the hair back from her face. Her eyelids drifted heavily over her eyes, as if even the small effort of keeping them raised was too much to bear. Solaire fell to a knee and took her down with him, cradling her shoulders reverently in his arm. "Quelana..." it was the only word he could muster the strength to voice.

The chamber rumbled on, a fresh smattering of rock coming loose from the ceiling to beat at the ground.

When Solaire lifted his rheumy eyes from Quelana's rapidly-fading ones, it was not Logan, but Lautrec he found standing beside them, staring down at the morbid scene with the bleakest, most hollow, expression Solaire had ever seen a man wear.

"Lautrec," Solaire began with a shake of his head. "I... I didn't do this intentionally! I... it was an accident! I swear it! I swear my life on it, Lautrec!"

But Lautrec only rushed him.

With no other choice, Solaire pulled his sword from Quelana's chest and let her limp body slump to the rock so he could stand and defend himself.

Only Lautrec did not rush at himin attack, but went sliding to his knees to cradle Quelana's head in his lap instead. Tears that Solaire would never had imagined possible in the knight of Carim's eyes cut trails down the man's cheeks and he shook the fading witch in his arms desperately - as if his will alone could keep her from death's hands. "No, no, no, no, please Gods, no," he muttered. "Not her. Gods, please. Not her!"

But by then, Quelana was already gone.

"No. No. Gods, no. Please. No." Lautrec rambled on in the disoriented, helpless, and desperate tone of a man broken as he rocked the dead witch in his arms and spilled tears into her dark hair and upon her pale brow.

"Lautrec..." Solaire began, but could not find any words that might possibly put the man at peace, so resolved to remain silent. He returned his gaze to the fog gate instead, where Logan once again had returned, and was wrestling desperately with Ben to drag him outside.

Anger came then, and that time, Solaire did not-and likely could not-stave it away. He let it course within him as he charged the sorcerer.

Several gaping holes had formed up in the chamber's floor by then, and Solaire had to leap around them as he closed the distance on Logan. When he'd nearly reached the sorcerer, the man with the big hat turned to face him and sneered; as if Solaire was nothing more than a pesky mosquito looking for a bite. Logan shoved Ben to the ground and raised his catalyst to his chest. Blue light emanated from the tip, and a moment later, a bolt of magic was sailing right towards Solaire's legs. He leaped the attack and threw himself sideways to avoid a second blast from the catalyst. When he'd clambered back to his feet, however, Logan had slipped around him and was weaving in between the shadows and pillars again in attempt to vanish into the darkness.

Solaire was not so easily fooled that time, though. He held his ground near the stairs, took up a defensive stance, and shouted, "You've lost, Logan! It's over! I'm not moving from this spot! The only way out is through me, so show yourself!"

The chamber trembled, otherwise: silence.

"Show yourself!" Solaire demanded, so furious then he could feel his veins carrying scorching-hot blood through his body.

And that time: Logan did. A mound of rubble and debris had formed up at the chamber's center, right behind the bonfire. The sorcerer came slowly climbing up over the rear of it to stand at its apex and lift his hands to his sides; as if in triumph. "Here I am, old friend."

Solaire stepped forward, but not enough to allow Logan to slip around to Ben again. He pointed his sword up the steep rise of shattered rocks and crumbled stone and narrowed his eyes onto Logan's. "It's over, Logan. And it is far past time you answered for your atrocities, you mad, vile-"

"Yes, yes, yes," Logan interjected with an indifferent wave of his hand. "May we skip the part where we hurl insults at one another? After all, we are standing in a chamber that, very shortly, appears to be on the verge of collapse." Logan's eyes swept the cavern walls, and as if on cue, another tremble crumbled them further to ruin. The sorcerer's gaze landed upon Gwyn's corpse beside the bonfire. "Killed daddy, did you? Mmm. Appears I'm not the only 'treacherous' one among us, father-slayer, mmm?"

"Silence!" Solaire demanded. "I'm going to kill you now, Logan. There has never been a man nor beast nor demon more deserving of such punishment than you."

"Kill?" Logan echoed with a raise of his brow. "Mmm. Bit difficult, that task might be, seeing as the precious little Chosen girl that you sent to obtain the source of my immortality failed you. I believe you'll find her rotting corpse in a cage near the fog gate." His lips curled to a grotesque smile. "Poor Abigail. You send a sheep to a wolf, though, and... well, what more did you truly expect?"

"If I have to kill you a million times, I'll kill you a million and one," Solaire told him, the grip on his anger fully lost then.

"Striking words," Logan admitted with a nod of his head. "But not nearly enough time, I'm afraid. This chamber will collapse soon enough. If neither of us is dead when it does, both of us will die." He leaned his head back and pulled a deep breath of the air. "Mmmmm, can you feel that, Knight of Sunlight? The importance of this moment? Everything we've done and fought for and worked tirelessly to obtain... and it all now hangs on a battle between an old knight and an even older sorcerer." His disgusting smile rose. "A fitting end to our story."

Solaire inched closer; his shield drawn defensively.

Laughter seeped through the mad sorcerer's lips. "Unfortunate, truthfully, that only one of us is actually mortal, though, isn't it?" He laughed again, patted at his chest, and-

-his smile faded immediately. Logan frantically groped around the neckline of his robes and, for perhaps the first time since knowing him, Solaire saw true consternation surface in the sorcerer's eyes. "How..." He began, trailed off, and snapped his eyes over Solaire's shoulders.

Solaire half-turned to find Benjamin limping forth on his hideously disfigured and broken leg; his scarred face was twisted into an expression of utter insanity; his lips quivered as if ready to leap from his mouth; his eyes narrowed and widened and narrowed again on Logan madly.

And in his hand: the primordial crystal hung at the end of a chain.

Solaire faced Logan and found the man's face set in hard, callous, lines as he glared at the dangling crystal. "Mmm... so you were wrestling so fiercely with me for a reason after all, Benjamin, mmm? Very tricky. Very clever. Now bring it here, my Chosen. Bring it to me, my Dark Lord, and we will kill this unruly rat who stands in the way of your lordship... together."

But Ben had stopped walking and started snickering; a mad, quiet, sound that poured from his lips intermittently as he held Logan's eyes.

"My Chosen!" Logan shouted; finally a bit of unnerve coming to his voice. "I said bring me that crystal! Do you hear me, my Chosen? If you bring me that, I..." His slimy tongue darted out to run across his bottom lip and his long fingers tapped against one another. "My Dark Lord... if you bring me that crystal now, I will bring her back to life. You sweet little bedroom partner, mmm? Pharis! Ah! Yes, Pharis! I will return her to you! I will find a way, my Chosen! I will-"

"Her name was Mary," Ben interjected, hoisted the crystal over his head, and smashed it to bits off the cavern floor.

When the resounding clash of the shattered crystal died away, Logan leered at Ben, looking not entirely dissimilar from a reptile as he spoke, "Well... you are quite the unruly little rat, aren't you?"

And without further hesitation, the sorcerer thumped his catalyst off the ground and a bolt of blue magic rocketed through the cave, sending streaks of icy light soaring along the ceiling and floor as it raced forth. It found its end in Ben's belly, and the sheer velocity of the attack sent the young man crashing back into the cave wall. A moment later he slumped to the floor alongside a shower of crumbled rock and lay motionless upon it.

With Ben dealt with, Logan turned his leer on Solaire. "I suppose that makes me mortal once more, mmm?" He raised his hand to his eyes and fanned the fingers, as if expecting them to look somehow different now that he no longer possessed immortality. "I am killable... a shame for you, old friend, that you'll still have to find a way to actually kill me." He

laughed.

Solaire inched closer, wary of the sudden danger the man's catalyst could conjure for him. "You are a despicable creature, Logan, and your end is at hand. I-"

From the shadows beside Logan's mountain of rubble, Lautrec emerged. The man's eyes were red above his golden suit of armor-which was now stained with the heartwrenching streaks of Quelana's dying blood-and he stared blankly at the ground before him as his feet carried him listlessly forward into the dim light seeping through the fog gate. His hands were on the hilts of his shotels. His expression was that of a man in shambles: utterly and inexorably broken.

A delighted smile rose on Logan's face as he looked upon the knight of Carim. "Ah, Lautrec, my son. Another old friend who I once had the good honor of calling 'partner'. My boy, I have been waiting for you!"

Lautrec did not answer, did not look up, did not even look as if he wished to be alive any longer.

"Have you met our friend here?" Logan questioned him anyway, gesturing to Solaire. "Quelana's lover, meet Quelana's killer!"

"You hold your vile tongue, you mad man!" Solaire shouted. "I never intended to-"

"Ah, intentions," Logan interjected, "such vague and obscured things at times. Who truly can know a man's intentions but the man himself, mmm? It is poor grounds to stand upon when explaining your actions away with the muddy concept of 'intention', isn't it? There is only 'did' and 'did not' that we can judge a man by, and what you did, Knight Solaire, is murder poor Lautrec's love."

Lautrec's arms shook. His shotels' blades rattled against his greaves.

"Lautrec, I swear to you," Solaire pleaded. "It was an accident. You know me. I would never choose to murder Quelana."

"A man does what a man does," Logan said. "It is a rare moment in life when he has true choice laid before him."

Lautrec's knuckles whitened around his blades' hilts. He lifted his eyes to Solaire and narrowed them across the gap between them.

The chamber rumbled; more rocks broke apart; more holes opened gaping pits into the earth itself.

"You can't be listening to him," Solaire went on. "Lautrec... you simply cannot be buying into this mad man's ramblings!"

"You worked for me once, Lautrec," Logan calmly continued. "Work for me again and kill this rather annoying knight. Kill him and we walk out of here. I've left Ben clinging to justenough life for us to drag him beyond the fog. Then... then we enter the new world as victors and kings and Gods! We walk out and we become conquerers of worlds, Lautrec!" Logan threw his arms up over his head and for a brief moment, Solaire thought his draping robes looked like the wings of a dragon. "We are men of ambition! Of intellect! Of courage and bravery and tenacity and perseverance!"

A great, burrowing, tremor ran the length of the chamber, and all at once the walls blasted apart and a tremendous, cold, wind swept over them. Solaire shielded his eyes and stared out beyond the-now-missing-sections of wall that circled the perimeter. The red mists he'd spotted around the upper levels of the keep had closed down around its core, and were swirling madly just outside. Thunder grumbled from somewhere high above, and a bolt of blue and yellow lightning snapped its jagged teeth at the keep's exterior.

Logan went on, unphased. "Look at us! Look at where we stand! This is no accident! This is not fate! This is not destiny! This is the fruits of our labor! This is the reward of our strength! And now we face the worlds awaiting us as champions of our own! We have fought and crawled our way to this moment to stand victorious against the chains that look to bind us, and the cruel 'Creators' that would see us suffer for an eternity! We are heroes! We are Gods! We are LIBERATORS!"

More lightning chewed into the earth outside the chamber walls, first at the rear of it, then the sides, then everywhere around it, encasing them entirely in a web of blue, crackling, lightning.

"Now kill him, Lautrec!" Logan wailed. "Kill him and let us enter Lordran's dark era together, as friends and partners and GODS! Kill Solaire! Kill him! Kill him! KILL HIM!"

Solaire lifted his sword-

-and the ground beneath him vanished. Whatever chaos was taking the Kiln had opened a gaping pit into the black void of eternity below, and Solaire was caught so unaware when it swallowed the rock underfoot, he could only scramble desperately for something to grip as he plummeted downwards, but nothing came. He felt rock smack into his back and his whole body twisted awkwardly as he slid down a slanted piece of earth, another, and tumbled into a wild roll; the world spinning around him madly as he sailed down a steeply embanked fall of slated rock. His hand grasped for handholds and found none, his feet kicked at the earth, but only slid on pebbles and debris, and by the time his vision had stopped spinning, he was sailing off the edge of the rock: nothing awaiting him below but the void.

When the blackness was on the verge of swallowing him whole, Solaire made one last desperate grab towards the rock-

-and Lautrec caught it.

Solaire's legs went swinging down over the nothingness as he turned his gaze upwards. Lautrec's face was red and lined with the stressful exertion of maintaining both their weight. His free hand was slung back towards the sloped rock, clutching the hilt of a shotel that he'd burrowed into the rock itself, but was slowly cutting a jagged trenched downwards.

Solaire roared to find some semblance of strength left within him, flung his other arm upwards, and found rock beneath his elbow. He git his teeth and hosted himself up, and after a lingering, dreadful, moment in which he believed he would not have the inner strength to do so, he climbed back to the rock.

Lautrec released his arm and the two fought to their feet together. When Solaire found the knight of Carim's eyes, Lautrec nodded. "We take Logan together."

If Solaire could have spoken his assent, he would have, but his throat was all but closed off in that moment, so he simply nodded, looked towards the cracked rim of the hole leading back to the Kiln, and began the climb alongside Lautrec.

When they'd breached the hole back into the chamber, Solaire found Logan once again dragging Ben towards the fog gate; the young man looking to only be clinging to life by a thread then.

Solaire unsheathed his sword as Lautrec pulled free his second shotel, and the two of them closed fast on Logan's flanks. The mad sorcerer turned back just as he'd made it to the last step before the fog gate. His eyes found Lautrec and a look of severe disappointment filled them. "Ah... knights," he hissed with disgust, spun back with catalyst raised, and blasted a bolt of magic towards Lautrec.

Lautrec threw himself sideways as the attack shattered the floor beneath him. Solaire rushed for the sorcerer, but Logan spun on him with a cold look of fury burning in the sorcerer's eyes as he conjured another bolt and hurled it forth. Solaire was too close to avoid the attack. He lowered to a knee and flung his shield up between them instead, and a moment later felt the intense force of Logan's Soul Arrow collide against it. When he lowered the shield, Logan had scrambled into the shadows again.

Only by then, the shadows were far less concealing than they'd previously been. The walls of the chamber had all but crumbled to nothing around them, pouring in that faint and eerie red mist. The queer blue lightning was crackling in maddeningly short intervals as well, sending icy flashes to paint the darkness Logan was attempting so vehemently to hide in, and

as Solaire joined back with Lautrec at the room's center, he didn't believe either one of them would fall for the mad sorcerer's deceptions any longer.

Logan's robes went billowing between two pillars. Lautrec pointed him out. Solaire nodded. They spread on the thing's flanks. Solaire stepped slowly around a fall of rock to peek into Logan's hiding place.

The mad sorcerer barreled out himself, though, and hovering above his wide-brimmed hat, a twinkling arch of crystalized magic came with him. The Crystal Soulmass homed on Solaire's position and launched for him. Solaire twisted back around a pillar, and a moment later felt the entire thing explode into bits as Logan's magic took its backside.

He spun away with his sword drawn-

-but Logan had already launched another bolt of magic. Solaire got his shield up, but only partially, and half the blast took his chest. The wind left his body and pain wracked him as his feet lifted from the ground and he went tumbling back to crash into a pile of debris. He dug his elbows in under his back and shoved, but by the time he'd worked his way back to his feet, Logan was driving on him again. The mad sorcerer lifted his catalyst high and-

-Lautrec leapt from the shadows himself, bringing his shotels down upon the sorcerer's head. Logan must've caught the attack in his periphery, however, for he threw himself from the certain death of Lautrec's blades at the last moment.

Lautrec did not relent. He charged after the sorcerer, his face contorted with hatred. Logan sent a Soul Arrow into his path to slow the furious knight's charge, but Lautrec avoided it and came even more aggressively.

With no choice left to him, Logan retreated.

And Solaire moved around the opposite end of the chamber, hoping to catch the man fleeing unaware. He squinted into the dark pathway that traced a semi-circle around the rim of the chamber, following Lautrec and Logan's chase as he moved with them himself. Lautrec was closing ground and Logan knew it: he pressed on more quickly, but more carelessly as well, trying to send desperate blasts of magic back at the gold-armored knight as he did. Solaire followed around the chamber's edge, watched, followed, watched, drew his sword.

Lautrec, perhaps spotting him and realizing what he was hoping to accomplish, bellowed a warcry that pulled Logan's attention back his way as the mad sorcerer continued fleeing. Solaire lunged around the pillar he was fleeing to though,and-that time-found his mark: for Logan's chest filled with his sword at once.

The sorcerer's mouth gaped and blood geysered from within as he

snapped his head around and tried bringing up his catalyst-

-but Lautrec had closed on his backside by then and burrowed his shotels up and into Logan's sides. Logan's face scrunched up in agony as he spun on Lautrec-

-and Solaire yanked his sword from the sorcerer's chest and stabbed him again, this time in the stomach. The man fell to his knees and clenched his teeth and looked ready to hiss some hateful remark-

-but it never came, for Lautrec laid his shotels down on either side of the sorcerer's neck and swiped them inwards at the same time, beheading him. Logan's severed head slumped off his shoulders as his wide- brimmed hat floated up briefly in the wind's embrace-as if one final act of defiance against the world its wearer had sought so fiercely to conquer- before being carried off violently into the storm brewing just outside the walls.

The chamber rumbled so violently then, Solaire was sure it was going to cave in on them. When it didn't, however, he found his footing and faced the Kiln's bonfire. With Logan defeated, there was only one thing left to do then, and he set forth to do it at once.

He'd nearly made it when Lautrec stepped in his way, blocking any further advance.

Solaire met the man's eyes, his brow furrowed. "Lautrec... what are you-"

"I can't let you do it, Solaire," he said with a slow shake of his head; fierce winds billowing his dirty-blond hair around his face as he stared forth.

"Can't let me do what? Lautrec, what in Izalith are you talking about? It's over! Logan is dead! All I have to do now is give my soul to the flames and- "

"No," Lautrec interjected. "All you have to do is walk out that fog gate and not look back."

Solaire was so utterly perplexed in that moment, he could only gape at the man standing before him in silence.

"If you give yourself to the flames, a new era begins in Lordran," Lautrec went on. "A new world. One that may very well be filled with light and warmth and joy and peace..." His eyes floated to his side, where Quelana's corpse lied motionless, half-bathed in shadow. "But it will be a world without her."

Solaire flicked his eyes between Quelana and Lautrec as another ferocious tremor shook the chamber. "I... Lautrec, I don't understand what you're-"

"You're not lighting these flames," Lautrec said, pointing one of his shotels

back towards the vague lump that was Benjamin, curled into a ball upon the Kiln steps. "Because he is."

"Benjamin!? But-"

"The cycle, Solaire," Lautrec said as another gust of wind shook loose a dusting of rock and debris around them. "It has to go on. It has to... so that Quelana can return to life."

"Are you mad!?" Solaire bellowed.

"I love her." Lautrec's words came blunt and simple, and Solaire thought he'd need no further convincing that the man before him would either prevent him from saving Lordran... or die trying.

"You can't be serious..." Solaire muttered. "You... you can't be serious, Lautrec! After everything we've fought for? Everything we've sacrificed!? The lives that have been lost!? The suffering and pain so many have endured to get us here and finally, truly, FREE Lordran! And you- Gods, you would... would-"

It was Ornstein's words from the previous day that surfaced in his head then: Greed, my Lord, the Dragonslayer had told him of Gwyn's contempt for humanity.Your father saw greed in humans. That's why he hated them. It always comes back to greed with their kind. I only hope when their betrayal comes... it does not cost you everything.

Solaire glared across the gap between Lautrec and himself, raising his voice as he shouted to combat the swirling winds and rumbling tremors. "You would truly throw it all away, wouldn't you, Lautrec!? You would send Lordran back to its chains! All for your own greedy desires!? Surely you can't be that detestable of a man!? You cannot-"

"I love her!"

The chamber's ceiling began crumbling away. Outside, a string of blue lightning joined together and encased them, and in his periphery, Solaire could see mirrors into other worlds opening in the interwoven fabrics of their incandescent web. He could not look at it, though, for only madness lied that way, and his conflict stood defiantly forward, between him and Lordran's salvation.

"Lautrec..." Solaire began, maintaining his anger to attempt one final plea of sanity with the man standing opposed to him. "Listen to me. I vouched for you. When the others talked ill of you and believed you to be a wicked man, it was I who defended you. I fought alongside you. I bled alongside you. And if it had come to it... I would have died alongside you. But I am telling you now as a friend and as a fellow knight... stand down." He unsheathed his sword and angled it forth. "...or I will cut you down."

Lautrec raised his shotels, and when he voiced his reply, it was with the

defeated and broken tone of a man who believed his options had run out: "...I love her, Solaire."

There was no time to debate the matter any further, so with that final confession, Solaire sighed, raised his blade and shield, and pressed in for attack.

Lautrec met him in combat, and as their weapons clashed, the entire chamber lurched on its side, as if ready to topple over at any moment.

With the footing uneven, Solaire braced himself to catch a series of wild swings of Lautrec's shotels. The man was a bit younger than him and a bit more agile, but Solaire thought he might have the strength advantage if he could find a way to utilize it. He allowed himself to fall back on his heels, catching blow after blow of Lautrec's shotels against his shield and sword. Lautrec fought with a carelessness that Solaire simply could not afford, though, and he realized he was in desperate need of a counter strike.

He found it when the chamber shook again and Lautrec was, briefly, set off-balance. Solaire seized the moment to take up his sword in two hands and bat away the shotel in Lautrec's weak hand. When the knight of Carim's arm was thrown back with the force, Solaire jabbed for the weak spot in his armor's plating, between chest and back. Lautrec just managed to sidestep the strike, however, and sent one of his own at Solaire's arm. Solaire pulled away-

-but not quick enough, and the shotel's tip cut a bloody trail down the length of his forearm. He winced but fought through the pain, for Lautrec clearly had no intentions of relenting his assault. He came faster, harder, and Solaire could only backpedal as another cluster of rocks shook loose from the ceiling and splashed beside them.

They went twisting around a pillar, sword and shotels clashing in the melodic song of combat, and back up the now-sloped flooring towards the bonfire. Lautrec was driven by an anger that Solaire could not match, however, and with every blow countered or parried or taken atop his shield, he felt his age getting the best of him. Just one mistake, he thought, swatting aside another of Lautrec's attacks. Just one mistake and I can defeat him.

And after a long, arduous, climb up towards the bonfire, their blades battering against one another's the entire way as the Kiln poured down around them in a storm of chaos, the mistake came.

...but it was not Lautrec's mistake: it was his own.

Solaire fell for a feigned strike, and when he went to counter it, Lautrec lunged himself forward and buried his shotel in Solaire's side. Solaire wailed, shoved the man back, and lifted his sunlight straight sword to

crash it down across Lautrec's chest and-

-Lautrec's shotel sliced upwards and cut his hand off.

Solaire collapsed to the chamber floor as the most terrible pain he'd ever felt bolted up from his missing hand into his elbow and shoulder. He tossed his shield aside and cradled the deformed limb against his chest, gritting his teeth so hard he felt as if they might shatter in his mouth.

Lautrec stepped over him.

Solaire found his fallen sword lying at the man's boots. He reached his remaining hand for it, but Lautrec kicked it aside. When he lifted his eyes to Lautrec's own, he found only deep sorrow and regret within as he spoke. "I'm sorry, Solaire."

Solaire looked to the bloody stump of his arm and felt phantom fingers curling to a fist.

"I can still get you out of here if you want," Lautrec went on. "But when I restart the cycle, you'll come back anyway." He looked to Solaire's missing hand. "And that will never have happened."

"You threw it away," Solaire croaked. "We were so close, Lautrec, and you threw it away." He'd lost so much blood. He'd fought so long and hard and had taken so many nicks and bruises and cuts along the way. It was all catching up with him in that moment. The world was draped in dark curtains at the edges of his vision. Speaking became an arduous endeavor. "..I hope she's worth it."

Lautrec lowered to a knee and laid his hand on Solaire's chest. "She is."

(=)

He watched the sun fade from the Knight of Sunlight's eyes, and knew in that moment: Solaire of Astora was no more. Lautrec ran his hand down the warrior's brow, closing the lids over his eyes that-after a lifetime of struggles-finally got their rest. He retrieved the knight's blade, laid it on Solaire's chest, and stood.

Beyond the crumbling, chaotic, scene that had become the grounds of the Kiln, Ben lie in wait at the fog gate. Lautrec darted forth to cross to him at once.

Raining rocks were a near constant by then, and Lautrec had to keep moving his eyes warily between both the gaping pits opening into the floor as well as the falling shower of rocks dripping from the ceiling as he made his way through the Kiln.

When he came upon Ben, the scarred, bald, shivering, thing awaiting him

was hardly recognizable, but it was still alive, and that was all that mattered. He hooked his arms under Ben's own and hoisted him up against his chest. Ben stirred but voiced no protest, and a moment later, Lautrec was lugging him back across the crumbling cavern to the bonfire, and to the cycle that would restore Quelana's life.

Greed, he thought as he dragged Ben forth. Solaire had called his motives 'greed', but the truth couldn't have been further from the knight's accusation. He wanted Quelana alive; wanted her to laugh again and smile and cry with joy and live. And he was willing to throw it all away to obtain that... including his own life. Don't be there when the flames are lit, human, the Everlasting Dragon had told him in the Great Hollow, For the flames require sacrifice, and if you happen to be in the Kiln when they are lit, you will be sacrificed permanently. No returning in a cycle. So as Lautrec dragged Ben to the flames, he knew it could not have been greed that drove him, for he was offering the ultimate sacrifice for Quelana's return: his own existence.

And it is a fair trade, he thought. A fair trade.

They breached the inner circle of the Kiln and Lautrec tossed Ben beside the dead bonfire. "Light it, boy!" He shouted over the deafening winds and rumbles. "Give yourself to the flames!"

The dark, damp, orbs poking out of the scarred lands that was Ben's face moved between Lautrec and the bonfire; back and forth.

"Light it, Ben!" Lautrec demanded.  
Ben faced him, and Ben laughed.  
Lautrec unsheathed a shotel. "Light it!"  
"No light," Ben croaked with a shake of his head. "I am... your Dark... Lord."

The chamber lurched sideways and a fresh barrage of lightning ripped though the ceiling overhead. Lautrec stumbled forward, snatched Ben by the collar of his jerkin, and hoisted the boy closer to the bonfire. "Light it, you son of a bitch! LIGHT IT!" Ben smirked and Lautrec filled the boy's mouth with his knuckles. The kid's head rocked back on his shoulder and blood squirted from his lips. "LIGHT IT!' Lautrec wailed; he punched again. "LIGHT IT!" Again.

Ben's eyes were lolling about wildly in his sockets then, but when they landed on Lautrec's once more, the defiance still lived in them as he shook his head. "No."

Lautrec hit him again, and perhaps it was a bit harder than he should have, for Ben head slumped back at an odd angle and the boy went limp in his hold. "Light it!" Lautrec went on demanding, but by the time his voice was too hoarse from the shouting to go on, Ben was already dead.

Lautrec dropped him to the floor of the Kiln and stared at the blackened pit of the bonfire before him with dread. I am the last man alive in the world, the mad realization pierced his thoughts as the cavern fell to ruins around him. I am the last man alive, and my fate is to now die with Lordran.

In a way, it was fitting, and Lautrec simply fell to his knees to await his death with the sole, peaceful, hope that wherever it would take him, Quelana might be there waiting.

It was a long time before true hope came crawling forth from the rubble and the ruins to offer its hand. Movement stirred at his flank, and for one mad moment, Lautrec spun on it expecting Logan's headless body to be lumbering forth from thee shadows to drag his soul into Izalith for eternal damnation. But it wasn't Logan he found: it was Abby.

Quelana's voice spoke into his head from another lifetime ago, and it was so wonderful to hear it again, he never wanted it to leave him: The two of them are linked, she'd said once atop Domhnall's home in the Burg, speaking of Ben and Abby. The stronger one grows, the weaker the other becomes. If it were true, and in that moment Lautrec believed it more than anything, Ben's demise had given Abby just enough life to pull her from death's cold hands.

He leapt to his feet and shouted, "Abby!", as he raced back across the Kiln, ducking out of the way of an avalanche of rocks, and side-stepping a black pit swallowed up by the earth. When he came upon the pallid, bloody, thing fighting desperately to crawl her way out of Logan's cage, she was alive - but just barely. He lowered to his knees, took her frail body gently in his arms, hoisted her up to his chest, and stood again.

"Abby?" He called to her.

The girl's eyes were closed and her breaths came ragged and short in her chest, but her lips moved and a quiet, coarse, voice slipped from within all the same. "...my knight..."

"Yes," he answered at once, spinning back to the center of the room and beginning the long and dangerous trek to return to the bonfire. "Your knight is here, girl. Just stay alive. Just a little longer, Abby. Stay alive!"

Her answer came simply: "..alive."

A bolt of blue lightning barreled down directly in his path, and when Lautrec thrust himself sideways, Abby in tow, to avoid the thing, he saw madness creeping within: an army of beasts and demons from another world coming forth for Lordran, a maiden in black leading them onwards. He ignored it. He had to. If he didn't: his mind would simply shatter on the spot.

He raced and leaped and dodged and fought with everything in him to

make it back to the chamber's center, and when he finally did, he had only enough strength left to collapse the two of them beside it.

When he turned back to face the way they'd came, the chamber floor was as missing as the walls and ceiling, and Lautrec realized the small patch of land he and Abby laid upon was the only patch left in the Kiln: perhaps the only patch left in the world.

"Come on, girl!" He shouted, crawling up beside the bonfire so Abby could stick her hand in. "Abby!"

She was limp in his arms.

"ABBY!"

Her eyes flittered open.

"Light it, Abby! Light the flame! Now! Light it!"

And Abigail of Vinheim, Chosen Undead and Keeper of Order, stuck her hand out over the bonfire... and did.

A golden light moved from her fingertips to the thing's black core and took flame.

It filled Lautrec's eyes with the most glorious, wonderful, flash of light he'd ever seen and then-

-blackness.

When Lautrec's breath came unfrozen in his chest, he peered around the Kiln, but there was no Kiln left to see: only a thick and oppressive void of total darkness. The only things left in the entire world: the flaming bonfire, Abby, and himself.

He turned his eyes to the flames. They crackled quietly; nothing more. "Lautrec?"

Even her little, coarse, voice was enough to startle him. He looked to Abby and cradled her against his chest. "What is it, Abby?"

When she spoke, it was with the indomitable effort of a person fighting to voice their final words: "...over?"

Lautrec nodded. "It's over, Abby. It's over." And one way or another, he knew he told it true.

Abby's eyes did not open, but her lips lifted faintly into a smile: a smile that had shone light even in Lordran's darkest hours and had spread hope and courage to those lucky enough to glimpse upon it and even brightened his mood once or twice. Then the smile faded, the girl went

limp, and Abby passed away in his arms.

Lautrec lifted his gaze to the flames. They burned on, indifferent to her death.

"Go," he croaked at them. "Go and cycle it all back around. Return Quelana to her own in Blighttown. Return Solaire to the Burg. Go!"

The flames crackled; nothing more.

"What do you want!?" He shouted at them. "The Chosen gave her life to you! Go! Start the cycle! Start-"

A great light pierced his eyes, his mind, his soul, and Lautrec was rooted in place, silenced and blind and deaf. The light swirled in a barrage of colors that spread across his vision, blanketing it entirely. He felt cool air swimming through his hair and raking across his eyes and filling his lungs, and he was but helpless to watch as it swept into the colors themselves and changed their vague shapes to defined ones. And the more definition the things took on, the less Lautrec thought of them as mere 'colors' and the more he realized they were coming together to open another sort of 'window' into a different world.

The colors formed up into a long oval that stretched before his eyes, and within that oval, things began happening; wonderful things; maddening things; things he believed no man, woman, child, witch, or even dragon was ever meant to look upon. He saw lines taking shape, forming up into little objects that flittered and teemed with life. His eyes hurt from being blown back so wide, but he could not close them: he could only look on.

And what he saw awoke a realization deep within him that Lautrec could not quite piece together-not yet-but in that moment he knew what he was looking at; knew it as certainly as he'd ever known anything.

This is their world, he either said or thought; he couldn't be sure anymore. This is the world of the Creators.

From the blank canvas of green and blue that was the world, he saw great feats of architecture rising up; castles of stone and steel and glass that raced higher into the skies than even Lordran's greatest temples and kingdoms crafted for the Gods. He saw snaking roads of stone twisting in and around the castle grounds, and more buildings formed up, and more, and more, and then there were so many buildings and towers and castles and roads, the only thing left for them to do was fill up.

And they did.

These are our Gods, Lautrec said/thought. These are the Gods our world was built for. These are the Gods our Creators created this prison to appease.

But they didn't look like Gods; they looked like humans. Like him, or Abby, or-really-any of them. They filled the castles and keeps and buildings and roads until the whole world was brimming with the creatures, and then the roads themselves filled with strange carriages that were crafted of steel and raced forward on black wheels instead of being pulled by horses. More Gods were born into the world, so many, in fact, that Lautrec could no longer think of them as 'Gods' at all. They were too ubiquitous and didn't seem to house any gifts or powers: they were simply beings. They were no different from him. Somehow, someway, the Gods were no different than him.

And then he saw a mad sight that sent his mind rattling about momentarily in his head, if he even had a head left. He saw the humans of the Creators' world peering back into their world. He saw them gathering around 'windows' the same as the one that had opened in Logan's machine to peer in on Lordran.

Get away! He shouted with a voice that did not sound. Get away, you monsters! It's not your world! Its not yours!

But the other humans did not hear him, they only went on peering into their windows at Lordran. He saw them take control of the cycling Chosen Undeads, like the puppets at the end of string, through either their minds or through some sort of witchcraft or magic, and he saw them exploring and poking and prodding around in his world and it awoke a terrible rage in Lautrec.

But in the void, his rage could not hold him long, and he was calmed again at once.

And in that calmness he saw something strange happening to the humans 'playing' about in their world. He saw them smiling and laughing, he saw them fiercely working to overcome trials and tribulations, he saw them failing a thousand times... so that when success finally came, they were filled with exuberant, triumphant, joy. And he saw them enjoying it. He saw them enraptured by it. He saw them fawning over it and cheering over it and celebrating over it. And he saw them sharing it. Sharing it with others who held the same passion for it. He saw their passions take form in art. He saw great pictures and painting being crafted of Lordran and its inhabitants by them, and he saw sculptures being molded by them, and clothing being designed by them, and stories being written by them about his world: some short and endearing; some long, long, sprawling tales that one or two looked to finally be at their end. And as Laturec watched the humans that dwelled in the other world being joined together and bound to one another by their interest and passion for Lordran, he knew then that he'd had the wrong of it all that time: the cycle didn't exist because the Gods despised their world, it existed because they loved it.

Who does Lordran belong to? The dragon had asked him, and in that moment Lautrec knew the answer more true in his heart than anything

he'd ever known.

You, he spoke at the humans in the other world. Lordran belongs to you. It's yours. It's always been yours.

And the window slammed shut; the blackness returning.

Lautrec could hear the sound of his own breath in his lungs and his heart in his chest. It was the most deafening thing he'd ever heard playing into that silence. Then-

-the darkness pooled up out of the ground to take shape into a liquidy, black, hand.

Lautrec stared; there was nothing else he could think to do. The black hand moved closer to him.  
I know what you are.  
The hand kept coming.

You're here to 'erase' me, aren't you. It moved closer.

I don't get to come back. I knew that before I had Abby light the flames. I don't get to come back to Lordran. Not in a cycle. Not ever.

The hand fanned its fingers and loomed up over him.

Lautrec watched as it descended over him to swallow him up into the nothingness forever-

-and a brilliant white light pierced into the darkness so suddenly, Lautrec had to shield his eyes. The light brought forth wind and sound and life into the void, and Lautrec worked his eyes open to slits to watch what it was doing. The white light swirled around the hand, seeming to refuse it any further passage, and then it actually started pushing the hand away. It coiled around the fingers and spiraled down the wrist and thrust itself into the palm to drive the thing back away from him.

And tears rolled Lautrec's cheek, for he knew what the light was - and he should have: it had been trailing along beside him, watching over him, protecting him, for a very long time by then, and when he found the inner strength to muster words, he could only think of a choice few to voice.

Where do you go when you die, Ana?

The light pooled in the black hand's palm seemed to angle back towards him, and across its blank canvas, the definition of a face took form: not the

face of the adult firekeeper he'd last seen his sister as, but the face of the little girl he'd skipped stones across Carim's ponds with. She was smiling.

No. He tried moving his limbs to stop the hand, but they'd turned to stone. No! Ana!

The white light that was his sister began deteriorating, fading away, breaking apart, crumbling to nothing.

No! Lautrec willed every last bit of strength he had to make himself move, but it was not enough. No! Please! Not her! Take me! Do you hear me!? TAKE ME!

But the hand did not relent. It went on 'erasing' Ana's light, and Lautrec could do nothing but watch. He watched as the sister who he'd caused such pain and such grief and such unrelenting sorrow since they were children give her existence up for his own to go on. He watched as the little girl who he'd loved so dearly once and had played so carefree beside as children grew to the woman he'd lived to terrorize. He'd done that. Him. He'd done nothing but terrible things to her his entire life and now he'd done the most terrible of all: he'd somehow convinced her his life was more important than her own, and Lautrec could only squeeze one thing through the sorrowful, tight, chamber of his throat as tears rained from his eyes.

I'm sorry, Ana. I'm so sorry.

The light that was his sister touched her chest, and Lautrec thought for a moment she was pointing at her own heart, but then she moved the finger of light down towards his lap, and Lautrec traced its point to Abby, still cradled in his arms. His eyes fell to her chest, where a dirty, white, piece of paper was poking out from her breast pocket. He plucked it loose at once, folded back the crease, and found his own written words staring up at him within: 'I forgive you'

He lifted his eyes back to Ana-

-but she'd already vanished, and he could feel a monumental shift happening all around him.

... for the cycle was coming back around again, as cycles always do.

**()**


	8. Epilogue

Epilogue

The swamp water swirled and swirled, twisting down in on itself in a circle; a spinning, vile, stew of green and brown mucky water. The little whirlpool picked up speed until a nearby twig was pulled in to breach the outer rim of the oval and bent inwards till it snapped in two and was lost beneath the surface. When the whirlpool's momentum tapered off and the spinning waned away-the waters growing still once more-Quelana saw her reflection atop the swamp lake, and the sudden sight of it was enough to make her gasp and stumble back from its edge.

How long had I been staring at it today? She thought, pinching her robes a bit tighter to her chest and pulling deep breaths to still her nerves. She'd found herself staring into the swamp waters often in the last few days, and though each time she caught herself doing so she vowed not to let it happen again, she'd always find herself peering down into the dying spin of the whirlpools sooner or later anyway; trapped, seemingly, in an endless cycle. But I suppose that's the thing about cycles, she thought, but if there was back-half to the saying, she could not recall it.

There was something wrong with her. Quelana had known it days earlier, but each new one that came and went, she felt it more and more profoundly within her chest, her heart, her head, her soul: something was very, very, wrong. Each morning she woke feeling listless and as hollow as the dead soldiers that stalked Lordran. Each afternoon her ill feelings climbed a crescendo till she could barely muster the energy or desire to move from her spot beneath the large pillar that overlooked the swamps. And each night that fell-when the dark came to drape across the lands, and only the dim light of distant fireflies burning in the skies overhead remained to warm the world-Quelana knew that sooner or later, the time would come when she stopped bothering to get up at all.

She stepped tentatively to the edge of the waters again and peered down to glimpse her reflection. The image of her face upon the warped surface was unnerving. Her eyes carried dark rims and the weight of the things looked enough to sag the corner's as well, giving her an utterly defeated look. She held them: eyes that had once been a vibrant shade of green, but in that moment, only carried a sickly, pale, color that looked entirely at home among the diseased shade of the swamps themselves.

Something was missing from her. Some vital piece that had been, perhaps, carved out and stolen from her very soul at the hands of a treacherous demon who'd invaded her dreams. And whatever the missing something was, she knew she could not carry on much longer without it. The emptiness it'd left behind in its wake was, somehow, the heaviest burden she could possibly imagine bearing. It'd bound her hands and feet in invisible shackles, and everyday, the chains felt shorter, the manacles tighter, and the simple act of moving about became an increasingly

arduous endeavor. It was becoming ever more apparent as time passed that this was a test of willpower, and it was one which Quelana did not believe she could pass; not for very much longer, anyway.

She pried her eyes from the swamps, turned listlessly on her heel, and trudged back to lie down beneath the shade of her pillar. She stared blankly across the swamplands until she felt herself beginning to drift, closed her eyes, and fell asleep shortly after.

The next morning, she woke and flittered her eyes open, but did not lift her head from the dirty patch of earth around the pillar's base that had been her bedding. It had simply grown too difficult to do so. Instead, she rolled onto her back and stared into the pale fingers of sunlight, reaching forth from the Eastern horizon to claw life into the sky. The sight of it might've brought her hope and energy once-the sun was, after all, just a big ball of fire, and fire was the essence that fueled her soul-but it did not on that morning. All looking upon it did was reawaken the inane idea that had been relentlessly creeping into her head over the past few days; the idea that Quelana had had to vehemently cast aside time and time again when it arose, lest its madness grow vines around her mind and take hold.

Something within her wanted to leave Blighttown. She could not fathom why, or even how she would go about doing so, but a part of her desired it all the same. Perhaps some inner part of her that believed whatever she'd lost along the way might be found out there somewhere-beyond the surface, beyond the damp and dim lands of the swamp-and that it might be able to fill the bleak, gaping, void left in her chest, but how could she ever make such a journey? She did not have the courage, nor the knowhow, nor the bravery, to ever accomplish something so daring and bold as leaving the only home she'd ever known, and so each time the idea arose, it only brought with it more feelings of hopelessness and dread, and tightened those invisible shackles on her limbs just a bit more.

She rolled onto her side, squeezed her eyes shut, and resolved to waiting out the rest of the day unmoving from her carpet of dirt till the momentary reprieve of sleep came across her at again.

The next morning washed away the night, and with it came shafts of light filtering down into the swamps from above, and Quelana only wished she'd been born blind so they might not have awoken her at all. She did not bother opening her eyes that day, as she already knew what they would find: bleakness and sorrow and despair and nothing else. Instead, she spent the day toiling away at a newidea that had come to her in her dreams; an idea that had woken the realization that there were other ways to leave Blighttown then by walking out of it. Yes, she thought, other ways, and drifted back to sleep not long after.

She woke later into the blackness of night. There was a storm brewing overhead, rumbling its call across the sky and sending a light drizzle of rain down into Blighttown to bring the swamp waters alive; blossoming

under the raindrops into a web of widening circles that twirled outward forever in an endless cycle. And that's the thing about cycles, Quelana thought, but, again, could not recall the rest of the phrase she'd come to think of as some mystic, elusive, incantation, nor cared enough to put in any effort to do so, and so resolved to close her eyes once more and make herself return to the land of slumber; the soft chatter of rain and storm singing in her ears as she drifted.

The following morning, she lifted from sleep to sit in the hazy lands of the post-storm swamps. The air was damp and draped over the earth a foot high off the water; casting Blighttown in a ghostly blanket of iridescent mists. Quelana watched them twist and swirl a while, but could not seem to focus the blank canvas of her mind into any one thought for long, and so laid back down shortly after to wait for sleep again. As she did, her eyes trailed long, sluggish, lines into the surrounding areas, searching for something that might aid her 'escape', for she knew she would have to make it soon or her misery would manifest into anger, and her anger would give way to rage, and Quelana would vanish and a bad thing would take her place. And she'd rather be a dead thing than a bad thing, and so vowed to 'solve' that problem soon. Soon, she thought. Soon.

That notion lingered as the lids of her eyes grew heavy, and before long, she slept again.

Time passed; she could not say how much.

At some point she woke, but did not bother moving, and ended up spending a long, long, time trapped in an ambivalent state of both consciousness and unconsciousness. She could both think and not think, hear and not hear, exist and not exist, and when the cloud of confusion finally lifted its veil, only one, clear, thought permeated all others, changing them, becoming them, consuming them: it was time to leave Blighttown.

She rose to a stand in the soft, purple, pallet of the twilight hour and walked into the swamp, the waters closing in on her bare feet at once and wrapping her ankles in cold, heavy, fetters. She trudged forth without destination, only mildly aware of the faint buzzing of mosquitos to her left, and the rolling thunder of giants to her right. The waters slushed and sloshed as she forced her legs through them. They carried her to the base of a long, sloping, wall of weathered stone that crept up towards the surface in a maddeningly long ascent. Nestled up against it, a decaying corpse awaited.

It was curled into a ball of rotted flesh and tattered rags and here and there a yellowed and chipped bone poking out. There was no skin covering the skull that rested cradled in the thing's bony, blackened, fingers, and a gaping, toothless, mouth hung open on a slack jaw; forever gasping in horror at the world around it. Quelana crossed to the foul- smelling thing without bothering to wonder why, knelt, and reached for

its waist. At a leather band there, a dagger was buckled into a hilt. Her fingers worked the buckle loose, and she drew the blade up to her eyes for examination. It was dull and a bit rusted, but she knew it would get the job done all the same. She pressed it into the soft triangle of flesh beneath her chin, and angled it back towards her throat.

Now push, she thought, squeezing her eyes closed and ignoring the warm tear trailing down her cheek. Just push and you're free. She did, asserting enough force for the dull tip of the blade to break her skin, and a single drop of blood leaked from within. Racing down her neck in a warm line, it did not feel entirely dissimilar from the way her tear felt upon her cheek, and for some reason the similarity made Quelana drop the blade at once and bury her face into her hands to sob. Tomorrow, a rationale voice shouted into her head to be heard over her tears. Tomorrow you will have the strength to drive the blade further and end your suffering, for you are a strong flame, and a strong flame does not waver; it only burns on till it can burn no more, then it's light ends, and it simply ceases to be. As you will cease to be, without pain. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

She swiped her forearm across her eyes to clear her blurred vision, stood, and returned to her pillar. She collapsed beside it, curled up in the blanket of her own robes, and squeezed her eyes shut so tightly they hurt. She did not allow any thoughts to rise from the dark and pitiful well her head had become, and so before long, slept once more.

She dreamed of a young girl with chestnut brown hair, pretty blue eyes, and hands that were clasped together at her chest, pleading and imploring Quelana in desperate, soundless, prayer.

Quelana woke from the dream feeling utterly hollow, lifted her head, and looked across the waters to the corpse and the blade she'd left beside it. There was a cool breeze sweeping the swamps then, and it had sent the dead thing's tattered rags billowing in the air; as if waving a genial greeting towards her. Come on over, witch, it whispered on the wind's cry. Come on over and be free. She stared at the thing for a long, long, moment before deciding to heed the girl in her dream's warning, and not kill herself that day. Not yet. Maybe some other day, but not that one. The dream girl didn't want that. She laid back down. She slept.

More days came and went. Quelana could not muster the will or desire to lift herself up anymore, and so she spent them unmoving and indifferent to the world around her.

She was watching the swamp waters swirl again on one such day when the sounds of movement splashing nearer to her pillar pulled her attention raptly back towards the big lift: the one that carried travelers to and from the swamp. She listened only a moment before reaching the dreadful conclusion that someone was coming. She made herself stand and ready at once, ignoring the protests of her stiff and sore limbs. She wanted to die, but at her own hands, not at those of some treacherous

assassin or craven thief that would plunder her corpse.

She took the turn around her pillar to wait and see who might be approaching when her eyes flicked once more, briefly, to a new whirlpool that had started cycling around endlessly near her feet, and just like that, the phrase that had been eluding her mind the last few days suddenly surfaced, complete once more. It played melodically in her head as she pulled her gaze from the water and stepped forth to see who approached: That's the thing about cycles - they always come back around again.

Across the infested plains of Blighttown, beyond the mucky green swamps and past the cracked, decaying, pillars that held up the world, she saw him coming; his gold suit of armor glinting and gleaming off his torch with every cautious step he took. The man and his armor looked ridiculous. Gold had no place in the swamps. The swamps were for dark things, like herself, and Quelana decided if the fool came within striking distance, she would melt that armor right off his body to teach him a lesson.

As he trudged through the swamps, Quelana came to the realization that the man in gold was not simply heading in her general direction, but that she herself seemed to be his goal. The eyeslits of his helm were locked forth onto her position as he came, and Quelana suddenly wished she had not so bravely decided to rise and meet the stranger. She glanced quickly behind her, drawing out a potential escape route if the golden knight rushed her, but by the time she'd returned her gaze to the man, he'd nearly crossed the gap between them.

You could've killed yourself, she thought as he traveled the last stretch of swamp before the pillar. But you didn't, and now your fate is linked to a man foolish and cocky enough as to wear a suit of golden armor. She felt heat on her fingertips; her inner flames eager to leap and protect her.

The golden knight halted his boots in the ankle-high muck at the rim of her pillar and stared. Quelana shook her hand loose from the heavy robes that cluttered around it to show him a lash of flame, commanded balefully forth across her pale fingertips. The knight did not seem afraid, though, and after a long moment, he reached for his helm and pulled it from his head.

The face unveiled beneath was handsome and drawn in hard lines, framed by a mane of dirty-blond hair, and housed eyes as grey as a lifeless sky. They were focused so intently upon her, however, Quelana tugged at her robes to try and better hide her own face; for the man looked as if he were trying to see, perhaps, into her very soul. She frowned as his eyes narrowed further, grew damp at the corners, took on a look of desperation, and then he was moving towards her with his hand held between them.

"Quelana..." He croaked, reaching for her.

"Get back!" She hissed, hoping to sound as intimidating as the lash of flames leaping from her fingers appeared. He knows your name. That means he knows what you are. She darted her eyes around the swamps, suddenly aware of how many shadowed hiding spots there were closing in around them. She snapped her eyes back on his and barred her teeth. "You stay away from me! Stop coming closer! Now!"

"Quelana, please," the man went on, another step advanced in her direction.

She commanded a thin pillar of flame to whip at the golden fool's face from her forefinger. It lashed across his cheek, but she'd left enough room not to burn him - not yet. "Now go!" She shouted. "Go or the next flame I send will claim your life!"

But the man did not go. Instead, he pulled two long, curving, blades from sheaths at his golden hips, swung them out to his sides, and dropped them to land entrenched in the muds, innocuous and docile. He stepped forward again.

"If you take one more step, I will burn you, knight," Quelana told him, not allowing his act of self-disarming to placate her guard so easily. "Do you hear me, you fool? Turn around now and go back to whatever hole you crawled from and leave me be! You have no business here!"

"Quelana, please listen to me," he began, his voice trembling like a solitary leaf upon a dying tree, "I don't want to harm you. I don't want-"

"Everyone wants something," she interjected, glowering fiercely down at the man.

The words, for whatever reason, gave him pause. Consternation rearranged into hope upon his face and he swallowed with, what looked like, a great deal of effort. When he spoke, the words came soft and reverent: "Let me hold you just once. Just once, Quelana. You can handle that. You're a strong flame. And a strong flame doesn't waver, does it?"

"What did you say to me!?" She hissed incredulously. The knight stepped closer. "Would you listen to a story?" "Stop where you are!"

He did not. "It's a story about a knight and a witch and a cycle that spins on forever around them, trapping their souls in a perpetual state of unrest. A cycle that they nearly destroyed and escaped after a long, long, journey to do so, but that the heartbroken knight threw away at the last moment to save the witch whom he'd fallen in love with... but had died only moments before."

Quelana hadn't even realized she'd been backing up until her shoulder

blades collided against the hard stone of the pillar at her rear. Her hands joined together instinctively, her fingers fanning to give a wide berth on the flames she was ready to douse her pursuer in. "I'm warning you! You stay away from me! I will-"

"But when the cycle came back around," the man went on, still nearing, "the knight returned to it with his mind and knowledge still in tact. He returned to it because of a sister he'd so foolishly spent his adult life pursuing with the intent of acting out some childhood vengeance upon had taken his place in the closing moments of the world. His sister erased herself from existence... so the knight's own could go on - could come back." Tears swelled more prominently upon his grey eyes. "And the knight struggled very painfully with this for a long time... until he drew to the conclusion that his sister's sacrifice would not have to be wasted simply on him."

"I... you... don't..." Quelana meant to continue threatening the man, but his words had enamored her and turned her own slow and sluggish.

He was practically atop her by then; his eyes still locked so intently on her own, she could do nothing but hold them and gape. He went on, "So the knight set out once more. To find the... friends he'd made... and the witch he loved very dearly... and to set right the last wrong he could with the gift of life his sister had bestowed upon him."

There was a twinkling of familiarity in the man's face then. She pulled a breath, stammered, reached for him, "You..."

"Quelana," Lautrec said, taking hold of her grasping hands. "I made your eldest sister a promise once. A promise I intend to keep. I love you. And, if you'll allow it, I'll see you from this world yet. To the ocean, to the final gate of fog... and to whatever might lie beyond."

She reached for him and took him in her arms and pressed her face to his chest, and then her eyes were clamped shut and her hands balled to fists and tears streamed from her eyes in relentless torrents. She could hardly speak, hardly think, hardly breath, but she was aware of one thing above all others: the missing piece of her was filled once more, the memories of another life flooding her mind, and the burden of despair was lifted from her soul at once - for she was in Lautrec's arms again, and in one another's embrace, everything was alright in the world.

-o-o-o-

It was a long time before either of them spoke. They seemed to reach a tacit agreement to simply hold one another and be content in the silent, warm, embrace of each other's arms. When Quelana at last mustered the will to pull away from Lautrec, glimpsing his face for only a moment was enough to make her squeeze herself to him once more; fearful she might lose him again if they grew too far apart. His hands were in her hair, as

they had been so often in another life, and the rise and fall of his chest with her cheek pressed against it was about the most comforting thing Quelana could have possibly imagined. She spoke softly from a throat that had gone coarse and dry, "How is this possible?"

"Ana," his answer came simply enough.

She swallowed, breathed, composed herself enough to ask another question: "I don't understand, Lautrec... what do you mean 'Ana'? What did she do?"

"I... don't know. Solaire and I... we killed Logan. Then I had to defeat Solaire to stop him from lighting the bonfire so that Abby could light it in his place, and you could return. It was as the Everlasting Dragon said: after Abby lit the bonfire, the cycle came back around, and some darkness came forth to remove me from it forever. But Ana was there... maybe it was the reason she had clung to this world and her soul lingered beside me for so long... so that she could... could watch over me. Protect me."

Quelana swiped at her eyes, but could not release herself from Lautrec's chest; she didn't think she had the strength to stand on her own just yet. She felt as if a second life that some other version of herself had lived had suddenly collided against her own, and the two were swirling about, trying to find just the right way to align with one another in harmony instead of dissonance. It made her head swim. After a long moment, she managed to ask, "Ana's gone, then?"

"...yes."

Profound sorrow stirred within her as she croaked, "...and Abby?"

"Abby got her wish, Quelana," he said, tightening his arms just a bit more around her. "The girl wanted to give herself to Lordran to bring an end to the darkness Logan had stirred up, and that is what she did. My sister's sacrifice is the reason I'm standing here, but Abby's is the reason any of us are."

Quelana squeezed her eyes shut and pulled a breath through her trembling lips. She thought of the blue-eyed girl who'd come to her in her dream, silently pleading for Quelana not to take her own life; perhaps one last act of kindness from her friend, and her sister... Abby.

After a long, tearful, moment of silence, thinking on the girl and their brief, but binding, time together, Quelana's eyes floated past Lautrec's shoulder, to the mound of webbing encasing a dark, cavernous, tunnel that wound deeper into the earth, and a new flood of memory washed over her. "If the cycle has come back around... that means... my sisters... they live again."

"They never wanted you to return to Izalith," Lautrec said. "They wanted you to leave, Quelana. Leave Izalith, leave Blighttown... leave Lordran."

"Leave Lordran..." she echoed, the concept so strange and foreign in her mind, she could barely make sense of it. She, at last, had the strength to pull herself from him enough to hold his eyes; eyes she recalled looking upon in her dying moments in the 'other' life and had provided some sense of comfort in her passing. "But the cycle, Lautrec. I thought we were meant to break it. Not... not flee from it."

He shook his head. "I saw things no man has ever seen, Quelana. I stood at the very core of existence itself after Abby lit that bonfire. I glimpsed worlds beyond ours, the world of our Creators, of our 'Gods'. And I was wrong. We were all wrong. The cycle... it isn't a prison." He lifted his gaze skywards, as if looking for the Gods themselves amidst the stand of white, puffy, clouds lumbering along the eastern winds. "It's a place for them. Our Gods. A place for them to enter and to watch and to share and to love. We can't break the cycle... because the cycle was never meant to be broken. It was meant to spin on. Forever. For them."

Quelana could only watch the clouds alongside him, a sense of awe and wonder stirring within her, making her feel small and insignificant, but liberated all the same. Do they watch us now? She wondered. Do they see our struggles? Hear our voices? Read our thoughts?

"I've told the rest as much," Lautrec said after a long moment of quiet.

She faced him, her brow raised. "The rest?"

"I awoke their minds to this reality the same as yours," he explained. "A gift of mine, I suppose, from Ana. I'm sorry I came for you last. I wanted to make sure of... well, a number of things. Most of all, I wanted to be sure you'd be safe. And that the rest would not attempt to harm or stop you." He turned towards the great lift that carried its platforms up out of the swamp. "They're waiting now to see us off."

"See us off... to where, Lautrec?"

He turned back on her, slipped one hand around her own, and the other grazed its knuckles across her cheek. "Come on."

And without further deliberations, he backed up and tugged gently at her hand. Quelana hesitated only slightly, but her feet were following his soon enough, for she trusted and loved the man leading them more than anything she'd ever had in her life, and knew wherever he might take her, she'd be safe with Lautrec at her side.

As she fell in under his arm, Lautrec squeezing her tight to his body, Quelana glanced back behind them to cast one last, longing, gaze at her little spot in Blighttown; a spot she now knew she'd never see again.

-o-o-o-

The sun was hanging low, nestled amidst the western stand of

mountaintops on the horizon by the time they reached the Firelink Shrine. Lordran was settling down to dusk, radiant orange light clawing across the sloping hills of grass; a cool and quiet breeze shuffling down from the Burg to send patchy lands of sprouted flowers dancing in its embrace; the air taking on an aromatic fragrance that soothed the soul. Quelana held her eyes skyward as she ascended the curve of stairs that wound their way up around the shrine's perimeter. She could hardly believe it was the same sky she recalled looking upon last in her 'other' life. Then, it had been plagued with a darkness and a maddening twist of foreboding clouds with jagged teeth of lightning crackling about its hull. Now, though... now it was a serene and placid portrait of pastels: light blue breaking to a soft violet, streaked with pretty lines of orange and red sunlight.

As she looked upon it, a thought stole across her mind that brought about a profound sense of inner-peace: Lordran has survived, she realized.The cold and the dark and the mad sorcerer's attempts to enslave it for his own greedy desires... it has survived. It has lived on. And its sun shines brighter than it ever had. She smiled wistfully, laid her head against Lautrec's shoulder, and walked on in his arms. If you could only see it now, Abby; it is a portrait right out of one of your book's stories.

Before they'd breached the last stretch of stairs, a soft chatter drifting to them from above, Lautrec halted them, and Quelana looked to see the bars of the underground prison Ana had been held in beneath the bonfire. Within: Anastacia herself, her knees folded under her, her face blank and staring.

"Lautrec," Quelana shouted and tugged at his arm so fiercely, he lost his balance. "Your sister! She-"

"It's not her." "But-"

Lautrec slipped from her grasp, moved to the bars, and knelt before them. He poked his arm through and laid his hand on Ana's knee-

-only it did notland on Ana's knee, it passed right through as if she were not there at all, and the firekeeper herself wavered, as if nothing more than a living reflection of a dream. When Lautrec turned back to Quelana, sadness gripped his face. "She's just an illusion now. No different than Gwynevere in Anor Londo." He faced the ethereal portrait housed within the cell again and sighed. "Would you leave me with this... illusion, anyway? I just need a moment. The others are waiting above."

Quelana looked between the two of them: an older sister who was nothing more then than a ghost, and her little brother, a knight who'd walked through hell and back and, with his sibling's aid, lived to tell the tale; such cold distance between them for most their lives, but bookended by

warmth that had ended just as soon as it'd begun. There was something so utterly tragic about that, she felt her cheek warm as a fresh tear trailed from her eye. When Lautrec's gaze returned to hers, Quelana simply bowed, and continued the climb of stairs to leave him alone with the sister he'd never be alone with again.

She reached the stair's end and found herself with the bonfire and nothing else, though she could hear that chattering of voices drifting near from beyond the stand of stone pillars and buildings that flanked the quiet scene's outer rim. She crossed to the fire and looked down on it, her thoughts returning to her own sisters still living in Izalith, and the tragic tale she supposed their relationship told as well.

She was only just beginning to consider finding someone to send and tell them she'd gone once her and Lautrec had when a familiar voice called to her from afar: "Aye Siwmae, Lady Quelana."

She spun on her heel and found a short man with a mop of auburn hair and a smile plastered across his freckled face from ear-to-ear. "Domhnall," she breathed the word with such relief, when a soft drumming of laughter followed, she had to pause and catch her breath.

The merchant crossed to her and threw his arms around her at once. "Oh, my good witch, your pretty face is a sight for sore eyes indeed!" He chuckled and pulled back just enough to fix her with a mischievous grin. "Tell me, my lady: have you missed my pretty face as well, though?"

"Very much," she said, swiping at her eyes. "Very much, Domhnall." And she wrapped him up in her arms again immediately. "You remember? Everything that happened?"

"Aye," he said. "Lautrec... something lives within that man now. Something that makes you remember. He needed only but come near to me and it all came back around like a, well, heh, a cycle, I suppose. I remember dying. Wasn't very pleasant, in truth." Quelana was ready to express her sympathies until Dom's laughter let her know he was able to find the humor in it all; even with something as morbid as his own death. "I've been killed and risen back up, my lady! Don't worry for me! I'm a bloody God now!"

And they both had a laugh at that, though when Quelana leaned away and found his eyes, they were as rheumy as her own, and all the two of them could do was hold one another once again.

It wasn't long after when the rest of them came, and with them came such a vehement and uncontrollably swelling of emotion within her, Quelana several times found herself wondering if it all wasn't but some wonderful dream she'd stumbled into.

Tarkus came first, the big mountain of his black armor lumbering up over

the top of the slope, though when his eyes found her and his big, hearty, smile filled his big, hearty, face, there was nothing 'imposing' about the man at all. He barreled down at Domhnall and her and pried Dom away long enough to squeeze Quelana in his tree-trunk arms himself; a boom of laughter erupting from his belly to fill the shrine with its warmth. Behind him, Andre and Rhea came next; the smith offering an amicable nod of his grey-maned head from afar; the priestess rushing to Quelana and taking her hands in her own as a greeting spilled from her comely lips and she began garrulously spewing forth a dozen things at once, though Quelana didn't mind: she was only happy to have the privilege to hear Rhea's voice again at all.

"Where's Rickert, Rhea?" Quelana asked when she able to sneak a word in; surprised at how meek her own voice sounded now that it had been worn down by her emotions. She'd never spilled so many tears in her whole life as she had since Lautrec came to her.

It was Tarkus who answered with a shake of his head. "Rickert's off on some fool's quest, as usual. Trying to prove something he can't prove."

"He'll be back," Rhea assured her. "Before... well... before you leave, Quelana."

Leave. The word pulled her eyes briefly towards the ocean, and to the wall of pale fog looming on the horizon beyond.

Sieglinde came next, and beside her, a large man in a round casing of iron armor. Sieglinde guided him near, Andre stepping aside to drape his muscular arm over the woman's tall shoulders. "Lady Quelana," Sieglinde greeted with a bow.

"Sieglinde," Quelana returned. "You... Lautrec has... 'woken' you, as well? All of you?"

"Aye," Andre growled. "Yer knight's been busy, witch. He's put his little 'gift' in half the damned world by now." Andre scratched at his beard. "S'ppose he done it fer you. Give ya a proper send-off 'n what have ya." He looked to Sieglinde and some of the old gruffness left the smith's face. "But, rememberin' what happened before... well, it comes with its own benefits," he said a bit more softly and squeezed Sieg's shoulder.

Sieglinde turned her smile from Andre to the round man beside her. "Quelana, this is my father, Siegmeyer."

"Oh?"

The man, Siegmeyer, bowed vivaciously, and when his head lifted again, the face upon it beamed with pride. "My daughter speaks very highly of you, my lady. Tis an honor to meet you."

Quelana was searching for words to reply to the jovial man with when a

familiar bald head came bobbing over the top of the slope, and a moment later, Patches drew to a halt at its peak, sticking the tip of his spear into the grass at his feet and sending a nod of recognition Quelana's way. She had only just returned it when the red-headed archer, Pharis, stepped beside him, and the two grasped hands, though there was look of deep longing in the woman's pale-blue eyes as she held them on Quelana.

"Even those two?" Quelana asked quietly.

"Lautrec seems to figure its better if we all remember than if we all don't," Domhnall explained. "After all, once you two go, it'll be up to us to keep a close watch on Logan and make sure that sinister, vile, man doesn't ever try anything like he tried in the last, erm... well, 'cycle'."

"Logan," Quelana croaked, in the warmth and joy upon seeing all the familiar faces she'd come to think of as her friends, she'd forgotten the mad sorcerer had likely returned as well. "Where is he?"

"Locked up nice and tight in Sen's Fortress where the bastard belongs," Tarkus answered. "And he ain't getting out anytime soon. Petrus is there watching on him, but after you go, I'll be heading back myself." The big man smirked and cracked his knuckles. "And I get bored sometimes roamin' about the top of the fortress. Might have to go and 'check in' on him every now and then. Ha!"

"Tarkus," Rhea said casting a stern look of admonishment the big man's way.

Comically, Tarkus actually shrunk away from the priestess. "Well, maybe just a few times, then."

Rhea's mouth went lopsided as she tugged at her maiden's robe. "Well... maybe a few," she acquiesced, and Tarkus' laughter filled the shrine again.

As happy as she was to be in the presence of those she'd believed had perished for good, Quelana could not help but notice a rather large absentee from their numbers. Her eyes found Domhnall's and narrowed. "Dom... where is Solaire?"

"Oh, he's around somewhere," Dom explained, casting a sweep of his gaze across the looming walls of stone around them. "With our new Chosen."

"Chosen?"

"Well, it is the point of a new cycle, Lady Quelana," Rhea explained. "Of course there's a new Chosen. He's a young boy. Smart. Eager to learn. Handsome."

"Rhea." It was Tarkus' turn to admonish the priestess.  
Rhea rolled her eyes. "But not as handsome as Rickert. Happy, Tarkus?"

"Better," Tarkus answered with a grin, and Quelana could not help but admire his and Rickert's friendship.

"So the Chosen is a young man..." Quelana said, lowering her eyes to stare back into the flames. She could not help but wonder if Lautrec's theories had been true when he'd voiced them so long ago, and that some Chosen came back to Lordran, even after lighting or not lighting the bonfire at the Kiln. Will you ever return, Abby, or was our cycle too unique to allow such a thing?

"Yes, Solaire's taken quite the liking to the boy," Dom went on, breaking the silence. "The two of them have been neigh inseparable since meeting up." He leaned near and grinned. "Even slayed a few demons, those two did."

"Then Solaire... he's not angry?" Quelana asked; she'd been fearing the moment him and Lautrec met up since Lautrec confessed to 'defeating' him in the Kiln.

"Angry!?" Tarkus exclaimed. "I haven't seen Solaire this full life of since... well, since a long time. He's got a sword in his hand and the sun on his back and a friend to bask in it with. What more could a man want?"

Relief washed over Quelana at once. "I feared he might be upset with Lautrec, for... well, for the way things turned out to be."

"Ah, but all things must be the way they are, my lady, or else they would not be at all."

Quelana turned towards the voice. There, coming slowly down the hill awash in the setting sun's red and gold warmth, Solaire approached; his helm cradled in the nook of his arm; his face joyous and as bright as the sun itself. His smile widened as Quelana moved to meet him, and, though she'd thought she'd spent every last tear in her body, a few more blurred her eyes again as they found one another's embrace.

"Solaire," she whispered, squeezing him against her.

"My lady," he returned. "The Sun shines just a bit brighter with your beauty radiating beneath it."

She pulled away from him, but, as it was with Domhnall, the two of them only laughed upon glimpsing one another's tear-streaked eyes and joined together once more.

"Solaire! Solaire!" A youthful voice trailed down the hill after the Knight of Sunlight.

Solaire angled his head back and answered, "Here, John! I'm here!"  
A moment later, a young man in boiled leathers, with an unkempt tangle

of brow hair on his head, and a rather blunt-looking shortsword, came running up to the crest of the hill. He leaned upon his knees, catching his wind as his eyes darted between Quelana and Solaire. He unfolded, casting a shrewd look down up them. "Solaire... who is this?"

Solaire turned from the young man to Quelana and a wistful smile took his face. "This... is a very dear friend of mine."

Quelana squeezed the knight's hand appreciatively as the boy, John, came cautiously down the hillside to join beside them. He examined her from head-to-toe before scratching at his chin and offering an indifferent shrug of his shoulders. "I'm John," he introduced himself tersely before turning on Solaire and saying, "Are we going back now? I've got an idea about how to better handle those Gargoyles on the bell tower. If I draw them left and you come up on their flank-"

Solaire lifted a hand to halt the boy, but his expression was amicable enough as he spoke. "In time, John. In time. For now, I'd like to spend a few moments with my friends. Surely, our adventure can wait just a little longer, can't it?"

The young man sighed and shifted his weight back and forth a few times before answering. "Well... alright. But then you'll come back with me, right? I need you, Solaire."

Something passed over Solaire's face then that Quelana just barely caught before it was gone. It was, perhaps, an ephemeral flash of deep, deep, pride and self-worth, one that only accompanied a person who was valued very dearly by another. But Solaire did not express this clandestine realization nor did he wear it ostentatiously as some badge of pride; he only bowed his head to the Chosen Undead and clapped him on the shoulder. "Of course I'll come back with you, John. Of course." He faced Quelana. "But first, let us catch up a bit."

And so they did.

The lot of them gathered around the bonfire as the sun sunk further into the western sea; a golden teardrop falling into the vast basin of water and spreading its light forth along the shimmering waves like the fingers of a giant, reaching out to cradle the world in warmth. Solaire seated himself and John went running off to 'explore' the surrounding area and 'make it safe'. They all shared a hearty laugh when he'd gone and Domhnall made a remark about the boy being as 'eager to adventure as Andre is eager to eat'. Andre growled as Andre was wont to do, but Sieglinde planted a kiss on the clearing of cheek in his forest of beard, and the smith's annoyance vanished at once. Tarkus started after on a tale about Logan begging him to be released from his cell in Sen's Fortress, and acted out a rather crude gesture as his 'reply' to the mad sorcerer's mad begging. Even Patches and Pharis drifted nearer to the circle as the laughter swelled, and Quelana saw ore than once the two of them squeezed each other's hands

appreciatively. They had both lost someone when Ben fell to Logan's deceptions-Patches, a friend, and Pharis... perhaps something more-but in their shared loss, it appeared as if they'd at least found one another.

Lautrec came climbing up from the lower cliffside and the chatter waned away at once. Quelana looked from his reddened eyes to Solaire's and, though she'd been assured there was no animosity between the two, could not quell a feeling of trepidation stirring in the pit of her stomach. Solaire rose to his feet and crossed to his fellow knight. Lautrec stepped forth, and a conversation unspoken seemed to pass between them- perhaps some knight's joint understanding-before Solaire offered his hand and Lautrec shook it. The tension in the group vanished after that, and both knights joined in the circle; Solaire returning to his seat; Lautrec taking Quelana in between his arms and kissing at her cheek.

"Are you alright?" She whispered back to him.

"I've said my goodbyes to Ana. I'm at peace with her and... wherever she is... I imagine she's at peace with me." He paused a moment before adding. "I suppose that's one cycle we did break."

She leaned back to kiss his lips. He rested his head against hers and fell silent.

Rhea was just getting the conversation going again by recounting the first moments of her 'reawakening' in Lautrec's presence when Pharis yelped and both her and Patches went stumbling back into each other's arms; the bald man hoisting up his spear at once.

Just like that, the circle drew each and every weapon they carried-and that, Quelana thought, turned out to be quite a lot-and spun on the threat Pharis and Patches had clearly seen.

There, coming stomping up over the hillside, a small, blue, wyvern appeared; its scaled wings flapping up to its sides in an impressive display that momentarily blanketed the sky at its rear. The drake screeched and craned its long neck towards them; beady, dark, eyes darting from person to person.

"No!" A voice trailed behind it. "Charles! No! Charles! Sit! SIT, I say! Sit, Charles!"

"Charles?" Tarkus echoed, and then the color drained from his face. "Oh... oh, you've got to be kidding me."

Rickert appeared beside the wyvern a moment later, the young man throwing his hands up frantically in the path of the small dragon's eyes to pull its attention his way. "Charles! Sit down, you fool of a beast, sit down"

The wyvern growled and flapped its wings defiantly until Rickert stuck an authoritative finger in the creature's face and commanded as loud as he

could for the beast to behave. The wyvern held the young man's gaze a moment before groaning again, beating its wings one final time, and finally-miraculously-obeying. It rested back on its haunches and folded its blue wings down against its body.

Rickert spun on the group, smiling the broadest smile Quelana had ever seen. His eyes found Tarkus and he pointed across the gap at his large friend. "Ha! I told you, Cradlebreaker! I told you, didn't I!?"

"A damned pet dragon..." Tarkus muttered, shaking his head with stunned incredulity. "I don't believe it."

"Believe it, Cradlebreaker!" Rickert cheered. "And say the words! Say 'em! We made a bet and you lost the bet and its time for me to collect on the bet, so say 'em!"

Tarkus looked utterly defeated as he threw up his arms and said, "Rickert is stronger than me."

"That's right! You hear that, Ray? You're going to marry a man stronger than a Cradlebreaker! How about that!?"

"Marry you?" Rhea questioned, but the slight lift at the corner of her lips betrayed her dumbfounded tone.

"Marry me?" Rickert echoed. "Well, if you're going to propose, I suppose I accept, Ray, but you'll have to fetch me a fairly nice ring. I am quite the catch, after all, with my cradle-breaking strength and my pet dragon." The wyvern groaned and Rickert shushed it and soon enough, the lot of them were laughing again.

The young man sauntered down to join the circle, fighting off a series of playful blows from Tarkus, and the group launched back into their chatter. The conversation was, at times, capricious, as it leapt from person to person and everyone seemed to have something to say about the 'cycle' they'd come from. Patches complained of having his hand smashed to bits by Kirk, though Quelana was quick to point out that had happened only after he'd thrown Lautrec from the Burg bridge. Nervous, reedy, laughter trickled from the Hyena's lips then as his eyes gave a cursory glance to the knight with his arms draped around Quelana, but Lautrec did not stir, he only tightened his hold on her a bit and kissed at her neck, and Quelana could not help but wonder, Have you finally tamed that angry beast that lived in your for so long, Lautrec? But, then again, she supposed she'd have a long, long, time to ascertain that answer.

Tarkus talked of the Archives, of the inner turmoil that had stirred up in the days of Logan's iron grip upon the inhabitants, and his control over the golems, and as he did, the man's anger rose and rose. Rhea, however, was quick to point out that all the lives that had been lost at the mad sorcerer's hands were returned to them now in this 'new cycle', and that

seemed to bring about a joint sense of relief upon their little group.

Andre spoke wistfully of the chapel and their brief time there, and-after a bit of coercing from Sieglinde-even admitted to enjoying cooking up all those lukewarm stews of his for everyone to feast on. Domhnall made a jest about Lautrec only willing to drink the stews down after he'd told him they were made with 'half wine'. The group got a good laugh out of that, and Quelana even heard Lautrec himself make some throaty noise that might have been his approval.

As the sun finally lowered enough to kiss the ocean, the chatter still went on. Quelana did not mind; the voices of the people she'd came to know as 'friends' was as comforting as Lautrec's arms around her waist, and she could have listened to it for the rest of her days, in truth, and been happy. Her eyes found Solaire's though-who'd been mostly quiet throughout the conversation, choosing instead to listen along with a faint smile playing at the corner's of his mouth-and when the Knight of Sunlight looked her way, she saw a sadness there that she understood at once: it was almost over. They could talk and talk and draw it out for as long as they could, but it would never last forever, and soon enough... the end would creep upon them.

"Solaire!' The young Chosen's voice wailed from afar. "I found a wyvern! Come on!"

"Don't attack it!" Rickert pleaded, and laughter filled their circle again.

Solaire rose to his feet and dusted loose dirt from his greaves. "I suppose that's my calling," he told them with a smile.

Quelana leaned back to kiss Lautrec's cheek before slipping from his arms and rising to join the Knight of Sunlight. "I'll walk with you."

Solaire bowed his assent, angled his elbow out from his body, and allowed Quelana to slip her own in beside it. Together they walked for the hillside, sunlight beating upon their backs.

"I won't see you again, Solaire," Quelana said when they'd put enough space on the bonfire and the group. "I suppose this time it truly is goodbye."

"Oh, it's never truly goodbye, my lady," Solaire replied, halting in his tracks, and spinning on his heel to take her arms in his. "Look there," he said, nodding to the West. Quelana did, and found the setting sun blazing brilliant red streaks across the ocean. When she returned her gaze to him, Solaire's smile had broadened. "Wherever that boat Lautrec has told me of takes you... you need only look upon the Sun, my lady, and know that some place, somewhere, it shines on me as it shines on you... and in that way, we will never be far apart."

She swiped at her eyes and forced a smile against her sadness. "Yes... I

suppose that is true."

"Come on, Solaire!" John called from the top of the hill.

Solaire glanced back at the young man and stared. "Breaking the cycle..." a short chuckle slipped through his lips. "I should've realized a long, long, time ago how foolhardy that was. Lautrec, I suppose, is the one whose opened my eyes to that now. My place was never as 'Lordran's Savior' or... or anything else. My place is here. With the Chosen Undead. At their side. Now... and always." He turned rheumy eyes on Quelana and squeezed her hands just a bit tighter. "He told me he saw the Gods, you know."

"I know," Quelana said; the task of speaking difficult through the tight channel of her throat.

"He said... he said that they don't look all that much different from you or I."

"Solaire!?"

"If you so happen to meet one in your travels, Lady Quelana," Solaire said as he released her arms and began turning back to head up the hillside. "Be sure to give them my thanks. This world was created for them... and I've taken quite a fondness to it. Goodbye, Quelana."

"Goodbye, Solaire."

The last image she had of the Knight of Sunlight was one that made her proud of having the privilege to have known the man. He joined in at the Chosen Undead's side and drew his sword, and the two of them went venturing off deeper into Lordran, and Quelana knew in that moment that even when she was gone, the world would be alright, for Solaire would be at the side of Chosen, no mater how many cycles came and went, then... and always.

When she joined back up with the group around the bonfire, the chatter went on for a bit longer, but the tides of change were in the air, and Quelana thought every one of them felt it: it was time to be moving on.

When the last bit of laughter trailed away, and the silence fell heavy in its wake, Lautrec stood and looked to each of them gathered around the bonfire in turn. "You all have my thanks for coming." He faced Quelana. "But its time to go."

Go. Quelana glanced towards the ocean and felt her breath come ragged against her throat. She put a hand to her brow as the world spun and forced herself calm. Shortly after, though, they were coming to her, and she had no more time to be afraid, for then was the time for goodbyes. Tarkus wrapped her up in his arms just as tightly as when he'd first met her at the Archives, so long ago in some other life. Rhea and Rickert kissed at her hands and squeezed her between them. Andre and Sieglinde

came behind them to bid farewell. Even Patches came forth to bow his head in respect before turning and sauntering back off to Pharis. Domhnall came last, and when the two of them pulled away from a teary- eyed embrace, Quelana halted him with a hand on his forearm.

"Quelana?" The merchant questioned.

"Domhnall... if in the next cycle or... or ten cycles from now, or a hundred cycles... if a Chosen truly can return to Lordran, and a young girl with brown hair and pretty blue eyes-"

Domhnall lifted a hand to halt her and when he smiled, a tear rolled his freckled cheek. "I will be sure to tell Abby you said you miss her... and you love her very much."

"Thank you, Domhnall," she croaked, and had to practically throw herself back into his arms to stave off another bout of crippling sadness.

When they parted, he flashed his toothy grin once more, turned, and trailed off to join the others, and only Lautrec and herself remained at the bonfire.

Lautrec was standing at the cliffside, staring out into the sea as the sinking sun stretched its last light up to claw red and gold fingers across his face and chest. Quelana stepped beside him, sniffling, and slipped under his arm. He wrapped her in it and pulled her to his chest, and for a while, they only stood there and stared out at their destination: the final veil of fog.

"What do you think will happen?" She finally asked into the silence. "When we... pass beyond it."

"The Everlasting Dragon said we'd just be 'gone'," he answered. "Gone..."

"Gone," he repeated. "I don't know what it means, but it can't be all that bad, can it?"

She reached for his chin and gently moved it towards her till their eyes met. "I'm afraid, Lautrec."

He nodded. "So am I." His eyes lifted to the horizon, and the twin fires of the setting sun burned in the grey wells of his pupils. "So let's go be afraid together."

And without further hesitation: they did.

They followed a narrow path that wound down the cliffside and ended at a thin stretch of shore, and they came upon the boat just as the last bit of sun was racing long lines across the waters it sat on. It was a small, white,

thing, bowed at the center, tapered at the ends, two lengthy oars nestled in grooves at its sides, their broad paddles floating carelessly atop the water at the boat's flanks. A small length of rope was tethering it to a stake stuck in the muddy shallows near land, but Lautrec was quick to slip a shotel from its sheath and slice the tethering loose. The boat rocked a bit back and forth, as if testing its newfound freedom, before settling again and lying still in wait.

He turned to face her, and Quelana tried exerting every bit of willpower she had to stop her hands from trembling, but was unsuccessful. Lautrec stepped before her and cupped her shaking hands in his own, running his fingers against her knuckles down to her wrists. "It's okay," he whispered. "I'll be right there with you, Quelana. I won't let anything bad happen to you. Not ever."

"Yes... I know," she croaked, but had to press her face to his chest to hide a fresh trail of tears. "I know. I'm ready." But are you ready to be 'gone'? A voice welled up from her soul and sent her hands trembling again.

"Quelana?"

"Yes," she said, swiping at her eyes and pulling a deep breath. "Let's go, then."

She stepped forward, her bare feet dipping into the cool waters of Lordran's great ocean only momentarily before Lautrec took hold of the boat and swung its broad side around for them to board. He took her hand and Quelana hoisted herself up over the boat's edge to stand atop the soft, wooden, planks of its flooring. Lautrec climbed in after her a moment later, shuffled around her, and lowered to the vessel's sole crossboard that stretched across the hull as a seat. Quelana lowered herself to sit between his legs and laid her trembling hands on the boat's sides. Lautrec leaned near to her, kissed her neck below the ear, and whispered again, "It's okay.", and that helped.

Then the sound of the oars breaking against the water echoed off the cliffside and Quelana's breath felt shallow and queer in her chest until she squeezed her eyes shut and imagined herself back in Blighttown where it was dark and safe. The smell of salt water filled her nose and the oars went on slapping at the water's surface, and there was no hiding her terror then, for even her knees were shaking against one another.

"Do you want me to turn back?" Lautrec asked over her shoulder.

"No," she answered at once. "This feels right. This is... this is what we have to do. This is what I know a part of me has always wanted to do. As my sisters knew before me... Go on rowing, Lautrec. I'm afraid, but I'll manage. I'll manage."

And she did. With every great slush of water and forward thrust of

momentum-though her eyes were closed-Quelana could feel their little boat drifting further and further out into the ocean, and the safety and comfort of land shrinking further and further away behind them. The steady motion of Lautrec's arms rowing forth and pinching just slightly at her shoulders grew comforting, though, and the rhythmic sounds of the ocean tide drumming against the boat's belly played like soft music in her ears, and soon enough, she found the courage to open her eyes once again.

The sight that met her stole her breath away, though not out of fear or trepidation, but out of awe and wonder at the majesty swirling up before her. They were far out to sea by then, and it seemed as if that swollen belly of the setting sun had grown ten-fold more pregnant since she'd last glimpsed it. It sat on the horizon beside them, tracing a wide red arch up into the sky and setting the water they drifted on ablaze. Quelana made her eyes move to that water, and atop it she saw shimmering colors swirling about like the mists that blanketed the post-storm swamps of Blighttown: iridescent and warm and beautiful. When Lautrec rowed the oars forth, the colors broke into a splash of even more colors, and it appeared as if the whole ocean was opening up to show them the wonders that lied beneath.

And looming up over them in a great, pale, castle, the wall of fog awaited. It had looked large and imposing enough from the shoreline, but there floating at its feet, the sight was maddeningly enormous and dizzying to look upon. Quelana made herself look upon it all the same, though, and when her fears came crawling forth from her chest, she waited them out until they passed, for she was a strong flame and she would not waver. A wind broke from the direction of the sun, and when it swirled over them, it howled like some great, feral, beast awoken from ancient slumber, and Lordran's final fog gate shimmered and flashed not unlike the ocean itself.

When it settled, however, a calm and serene quiet befell their little boat, as if the fog's final attempt to scare them off had failed, and the great beast had resolved itself to letting them pass.

And then Quelana turned back on Lautrec and their eyes met and she wondered how she could have been so silly in the first place to be afraid at all. She reached for his face, cupped his chin, kissed at his lips. They were warm and soft and she loved him very much in that moment and knew she would for all the moments that were yet to come in their lives.

And then she looked beyond him, back towards the shoreline and towards Lordran, but there was no more shoreline, and there was no more Lordran, for the world had been swallowed up whole by the great, white, castle around them, and only the fog remained.

And then Lautrec released the oars, for there was no point in rowing any longer, as their part of the journey was over, and the fog's part was set to

begin. His arms free, he wrapped Quelana in them and hugged her to his chest and she was thankful for that, for she knew he loved her as much as she loved him, and in one another's embrace, everything was alright in the world.

And then they went very, very, quiet, and only the soft, distant, sounds of the waters under the boat stirring against the hull played faintly in their ears, and that was alright too.

And then the fog swelled up on the air around them so greatly, it grew as ubiquitous and omnipresent as the air itself, and everything began to fade into the soft, sweet, curtains of mists until Quelana knew even Lautrec and herself resembled nothing more than little splotches of paint against a great, sprawling, canvas; or insects come to rest on the blossoming wings of a tulip; or small, black, squiggles fading away on a blank sheet of paper - as if they were nothing more than the final words of a long, long, story, that had reached its conclusion at last.

...and then they were gone.

 

 

 

 

_Breaking the Cycle_

_4/13/13 - 1/7/14_

_-The End_


End file.
